MSPA fan fiction 2

[Tuesday]

@KarneWarrior- this made me a happy weekday. C:
@Tenebrais- ARADIA'S LOG. :< THIS MADE ME A SAD. But Nepeta's made up for it. And Vriska's- I love Spidersprite. ffff.

Alright. I am venturing here from romart to step out of my comfort zone and attempt some sort of fanfiction!
yes it's romance and probably out of character but c'mon gimme a chance :>
it is supposed to be cute, but i dunno

Sleepover kanaya/rose

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-- adiosToreador started trolling grimAuxiliatrix! --

AT: hEY! }:D
AT: yOURE, uM, uP EARLY,
GA: Hello.
GA: Is That So? It Appears To Be The Early Evening Where I Am.
GA: Also, It Is Still Raining.
AT: wOW, rEALLY?
AT: aT THE EVENING, aND ALSO AT THE RAINING,
AT: sO, aRE YOU HAVING FUN OVER THERE?
GA: Indeed, I Certainly Am Enjoying Myself During My Stay Here.
AT: tHATS REALLY GOOD,
AT: aRE THINGS, uM, dIFFERENT OVER THERE?
GA: Different, Yes. That Describes This Experience Very Well.
GA: Most Of The Daily Routines Seem To Be Quite Similar To Our Own.
GA: But There Are Some Things That Are Rather Strange.
AT: rEALLY?
AT: cOULD YOU, uM, tELL ME ABOUT SOME OF THEM?
GA: Sure.
GA: Most Of Them Are Smaller Things, Such As Last Night I Could Only Set Eyes On A Single, Lonesome Moon.
AT: wOW, wEIRD! }:P
AT: wAS THE OTHER ONE HIDING?
GA: It Seems So.
GA: Oh, My Host Appears To Have Awoken From Her Nap.
GA: Is It Alright If I Continue This Conversation With You At A Later Date?
AT: oH, yEAH, sURE,
AT: hAVE FUN! }:)
AT: oH, aND SAY HI FOR ME,
GA: I Shall. Goodbye, I Will Talk To You Later.
AT: bYE!

-- grimAuxiliatrix became an idle troll! --

"Are- are you awake?"

The troll girl swung around on the computer chair, noting another quiet groan that drifted from the bundle under the duvet. She made her way over, sitting down on the bed and laying a grey hand on it. After a moment, a blonde mop rose from under the cover, dark eyes widening at the concerned frown on the other girl's face.

"What is the matter?"

"... cramp."

Kanaya ran slender fingers through the blonde mess in a futile attempt to tidy it up. "Perhaps I could massage the muscle to relieve the pain by allowing it to relax?" she offered, but that was just met with a shake of the head. She frowned a little more, offering her arm; Rose crawled out from under the blanket, righting her shirt and leaning against the troll. A cool arm wrapped around her shoulders, gentle fingers brushing her flushed skin. "Or perhaps I should fetch your mother?"

"No, that wouldn't help." the human grumbled, pulling her knees up to her chest. "All she'll do is give me a handful of pills and send me back to bed anyway. It isn't like she actually cares." Her abdomen clenched again and she grunted, shifting a little uncomfortably - that arm tightened reassuringly around her shoulders.

"Does this handful of pills relieve the pain that the cramp is causing?"

"... that's not the point." Rose sat up from the girl and swung her legs off the bed, pushing herself to her feet. She sighed heavily as she tied up her pyjama pants, hiking them up a little and moving toward the door. "I need to visit the bathroom. I'll be back soon."

Kanaya smiled and nodded, waiting politely until the girl had left the room before standing up and returning to the computer. She brought up the chat client again; only Tavros seemed to be around at the moment.

-- grimAuxiliatrix began trolling adiosToreador! --

GA: Hello.
AT: hEY, yOURE BACK,
AT: hOW IS EVERYTHING?
GA: Rose Still Seems To Have Those Awful Muscle Cramps That Started Yesterday.
AT: aWWW, }:(
AT: iS SHE GOING TO BE ALRIGHT?
GA: I Think So.
GA: Apparently This Happens Rather Often, And It Seems To Plague Many Humans.
AT: rEALLY?
AT: wHYCOME?
AT: tHAT IS, iF YOU KNOW,
GA: I'm Not Sure. She Said It Has Something To Do With The Way That Humans Reproduce.
GA: Also, It Only Seems To Afflict Females.
AT: tHATS SO WEIRD,
AT: wHY WOULD THAT EVEN HAPPEN?
GA: Again, I'm Not Sure. I Hope It Goes Away Soon, Though.
GA: It Upsets Me To See Her In Pain.
AT: yEAH,
AT: i, uH, hOPE SHE FEELS BETTER SOON,
AT: }:D

"Tell him I say thank you."

The troll girl almost leapt a foot in the air as she heard the quiet voice behind her, followed by a laugh. She swung around, cheeks flushed green as she looked up to Rose, arms folded over her chest and blonde head quirked to one side with a tired smile. "My apologies, I did not ask-"

"Don't be sorry." the human girl smiled, sliding her arms down around the troll's neck and nuzzling gently into her hair, minding the sharp candycorn horns. "I don't mind you using my computer." Kanaya relaxed a little, reaching her own arms up to return the awkward hug. "I'm going to get dressed now, and then we should head downstairs. I think mother has dinner ready, or something resembling that, at least."

"I should probably bid my friend goodnight and accompany you, then."

AT: aRE YOU STILL THERE?
AT: kANAYA?
GA: Apologies.
GA: Rose Has Just Informed Me We Are To Relocate Ourselves Downstairs.
GA: Apparently Her Mother Has Prepared A Meal Of Some Sort.
AT: oH, oKAY,
AT: i STILL DONT GET THAT WHOLE, uH, bIRTH MOTHER THING,
AT: aND WAIT
AT: dIDNT THAT MAKE YOU FEEL ILL YESTERDAY?
GA: I Was Merely Unfamiliar With It.
GA: I Should Be Alright Tonight.
GA: I Will Talk To You Tomorrow, Alright?
AT: sURE!
AT: }:D
AT: hAVE A GOOD DAY,
AT: eRM,
AT: i MEAN, nIGHT,
GA: The Same To You.

-- grimAuxiliatrix stopped trolling adiosToreador! --

sorry for a lack of in-character, but i hope it was readable nonetheless. :>

[Tenebrais]

That's pretty cute. I can definitely see them all interacting like that. Although I'd imagine Kanaya would be more weirded out by the human reproductive system.

Are you going to continue this, or is it a one-off? There's potential for a really cute plot there.

[Cathartes]

Yes! More, please, Tuesday! It's so cute, I want to see what happens!

(Horray, post 700 is boring, like the rest. Well, at least I used it to promote a really good fic!)

[SkaianRedeemer]

Notes

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Ugh, you guys, I am so tired of working on this fic, you have no idea. It was just this goofy little idea I had to start writing again by putting an IDE/Theory to narrative - this was just after Snowman started chatting with Terezi and I had a pretty good idea of what that was going to mean for the gang, up to and including pairings that... well let's just say I'm not at all fond of the first setup but that was the prediction. And when I say I had a "pretty good idea" I mean "yeah, I was totally wrong," especially in regards to that one pairing in particular. Andrew did one thing I didn't expect, as I saw when a srs RL issue kept me from even touching the fic for days as updates rolled on, and the whole dynamic changed (imho, for the better) because of it.

Now it's done and I'm so tired of editing, you guys. So tired. I only barely care enough to colour Trollian text and remove some of the mild sexual tension because I just don't want to risk poking the line when I don't really know where it is. If anyone cares to read the Mildly Less Safe For Work version, or just wants to get a head start on the completed fic (I'll post the other parts daily, except the smaller fourth) I tossed the whole thing into the Pit of Voles yesterday to languish unseen amongst the miscellany. I'm sure that should be enough to for anyone interested to find it.

So anyway, here's my story about how a little omission can spiral completely out of control, until no one knows what to do, who to trust, or who's even in charge any more. I hope you all enjoy!


Musical Thrones
Part 1 of 4: Thirteen Card Pickup (Part 2, 3, 4, 5)

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Karkat presided from atop an awkward throne, bubbling soper behind and the guilty-accused afore, grinning like an idiot. She had made a point of stressing that she was going to “represent herself,” which tried Karkat’s thin patience as he had not in any honesty intended to let her have any defence at all. As she continued to ramble so persuasively on the point that there was no actual crime committed in this instance, he lost his temper for the umpteenth, but first decisive, time.

“Why?” he demanded, slamming his fist down on the recouperacoon beside his leg. A stuffed dragon, cyan, tapped against the window on its roof-hanged rope, which Karkat felt added favourably to the milieu, while a pack of computers chimed away unanswered in the corner, which he felt did not. That was the most of it: while they were not alone, the others present were tucked in safely in bed, any dragon not already having been sent to its sentence had been stolen by imps, and all about them there was only graffiti and fluorescence wrapped about them in the carpets and the furniture; a sombre court scene on the wall struck out at the eyes with shock-red lances. All, from floor to ceiling and in between, was overwrote with a hundred white-chalk iterations of the genetic letters “R”, “O”, “A” and “r”, as only befit the respiteblock of the Seer of Mind.

He jumped to his feet and stood straight in her face and made sure she felt the distance. “Why? Were you both sitting around pretending it was the good old days when you were vigilantes feeding post-grubs to a six-storey spider when you went, I don’t know, ‘H3Y VR1SK4, L3TS G3T R1D OF THE ONLY GUY THAT L1K3S US 1N TH1S WHOL3 PL4C3!’”

“Oh my god, you are so terrible at that.”

“Oh, oh, or maybe: ‘Terezi, how a8ought we do something so stratos-fucking-pherically moronic that it’ll torque Karkat’s nu8 like it’s a8out to 8e torn off until Derse comes to finish us off or the Reckoning throws Pulse and Haze on top the White King’s rotting corpse?”

“I’m serious, you’re just absolutely terrible,” she said, grin as broad as ever, her teeth as filthy as the rest of her and all of them with such limited access to hygiene in The Medium. “It’s all a8out the inflection, YOU KNOW WH4T 1 M3AN? But yeah, I can really see why you think this is all about you, Karkat. I mean, besides the ego thing.” She reached up with her can and pushed him away directly between the eyes. “You two must have been half-way through your letters.”

“Letters?”

“‘DEAR LUSUS,’ yours starts. SEE THE INFLECTION, KARKAT, YOU BRING IT FROM THE DIAPHRAM. Or ‘Dear Parents, or Possibly Giant Sgrub Cloning Machine,” for him. ‘I just met the most wonderful boy!’ you both say. ‘HE JUST MAKES ME FEEL SO…’” And she wriggled with theatric pleasure, concluding with a demure smile, short stretch of her arms and punctuating girlish grunt and squeal. “Oh,” she said, “and then he would have probably added, ‘PS: I may have exiled the Queen, destabilised the government and left us defenceless us to Prospit. Hugs!, Jack.’”

Karkat weighed the pros and cons of strangling her with characteristic introspection. “You…” his fingers brushed aside her hair as they inched towards her neck. “Um, excuse me, let’s just backtrack a bit to, oh I don’t know, when YOU were the one that broke the Black Ring? If anyone should be taking a fucking bow for ‘exposing them to Prospit’ it’s the top-hat wearing fucking ringmaster here…”

“Oh you silly, stupid boy.” Ignoring his hands, she reached up through his grasp to pat him on the cheek. “Of course it was me, but that’s not funny.” And then she began to laugh and he had to step back, fists clenching and unclenching, unsure how to even take the first step from there onto semi-solid ground. He paced a touch, checking on the recouperacoon. Gamzee tossed in his sleep, makeup running off the just-submerged corner of his jaw, muttering something about “bats.” Feferi lay across from him, head in arms folded on the far edge, in a prime example of the communal living conditions they had been forced to adopt in the name of strength in numbers. She was having no nightmares, in fact, a smile crept up on her sleeping face and she looked fist to burst. All in all, Karkat felt it was for the better that she faced the wall.

The prosecution took the opening and continued her tangential case. “But seriously, how could it not be all about you? With you as our big scary leader, well! Every plan falling into place, every relationship fixed up nice like it’s some grub jigsaw to you. And well,” she took a step to close the gap between them, and leaned coquettishly towards him. “Well let’s just say I missed your dulcet tones. Why, you just radiate authority these days!”

She cupped her hand again on his cheek. His fists showed him brace himself. Here comes the jab, and god knows he had a cutter ready for it to take her back down to size. To his surprise, she leaned to his ear and spoke in a whisper: “What do you say we wrap up this little trial so you can have the prosecution to your chambers for a short… recess?”

His eyes shot wide, his face fell a mile in terror, and she felt it and broke away with echoing peals of insane laughter. “Oh my god, your face! heheh3h3…” She clutched at her sides. “…H4H4H4H4H4!” He stared agape. “That’s it! That’s all I needed. I’m guilty, put me away, I can’t take it any more!”

Karkat’s expression was quite the opposite. He watched her laugh for a while until she took a break to look up and check the damage, which was substantial. “…don’t do that.”

“Why?” she said, with a dark undertone in her voice, “SOR3 M3MOR13S?”

Karkat knew more than well enough that he had to change the subject, immediately. “Where’s Vriska?”

“Oh, excuse me, Your Tyranny, but I’m only allowed to answer questions that implicate myself. If you want me to implicate someone else, you’ll need evidence.”

Karkat wished he had something to snap or break but ultimately there was nothing he could do to vent his anger without backing down from her. “I saw Vriska there, how’s that for evidence?”

She laughed again. “Oh yeah. Well, hell if I know. She’s probably off hiding, honeymooning with Tavros and celebrating whatever who-knows relationship they have on that big pile of boondollars she got for kicking your ass.” She was not even going to afford him the luxury of fuming to himself that time: “I have to tell you, that was the best thing I saw all day. There was the funniest thing, the worst thing, and the best thing, all in a row. Very tidy.”

Karkat’s thoughts were all over, he needed time to regroup, but he could have done anything better in the entire world than to bid for time by asking: “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Well,” she said, hand stroking her chin, and then, with the casual tone of one recounting a funny story throughout, she recalled: “first you started swinging your curvy little stick at me, and first I was confused, and then you were shouting, and you clipped my leg, and I hit the ground.” He barred his teeth at her, but she pretended not to notice. “So you’ve all left me upset, hurt – emotionally and bleeding – and there’s this squeezing… uh… crushing feeling, like, in my chest? Because I didn’t know why you’re attacking me, you know, uh... you dipshit? Now I know, I know, that doesn’t sound like the funniest part of my day but bear with me.”

He held up a hand in front of her face, not that she seemed to notice that either, though perhaps more legitimately. He interrupted her all the same. “Oh, no, now that’s where you’re wrong. This is already hilarious. You didn’t know what was going on? I catch both of you just seconds after you stuffed an unconscious Jack Noir into a shuttle on autopilot and you expected me to what, break into applause?”

“But then,” she said, pushing aside his hand with a spread of her arms and cutting him off before he could say more, “But then, when you had me down and you could see my face, you’re all like ‘I thought you were an imp,’ with this like, totally devastated tone in your voice?” He couldn’t help it, he actually growled at her, but he knew it wasn’t half going to be enough to shut her up. “And then I got it! It was all just a mistake, and you never meant to attack me and it was funny!” She clapped her hands once, and then leaned forward with her shark-grin leering at him. “And then, ooh, and then, you locked me up and went to try to catch Vriska, and that pain, you know, in my chest? Came back, squeezed really, really hard? And then…” She make a spreading gesture with her hand. “Nothing! And that was the worst part of my day. So glad you asked, by the way.”

“Hey!” he snapped, pointing a finger in her face. “What do you… where do you get off with… HOW DO YOU THINK I WAS FEELING WH—”

“And then,” she finished, rocking on the balls of her feet. “Then she kicked your ass.” Karkat shut up just to stare at her in astonishment, and realized all at once that he had completely forgotten with whom he was dealing, and what she was capable of. “See?” she said, and counted off: “Funniest, worst, best.”

“You can’t honestly have expected me to just let you get away with that,” he said, in what passed for him as a hushed voice, something closer to a normal speaking tone.

She shrugged, her tone slipping a touch as honesty slipped between the cracks in an emotional surge. “I was trusting you to trust me. I trust my ears and nose and tongue to see for me…” At that point it had occurred to her that she had not meant to say any of that out loud, without obfuscation or misdirection. She wrapped up quickly: “...I thought I could trust you, too.”

“All you had to do was tell me,” he muttered. “Email, write all over one of my memos, fuck! ‘H3Y K4RK4T IM GONN4 GO RU1N 3V3RYTH1NG YOUVE B33N WORK1NG FOR M4YB3 W3 SHOULD H4V3 A L1TTLE T4LK 4BOUT 1T.’”

There it was. The perfect opening. All she had to do now was to hit him back at just the right angle and he would collapse under the weight of his own ego, though the cost was high. In leaving himself vulnerable he had struck a blow of his own. She could not argue with his actual point. It was true, all she should have done was to talk to him, have let herself be open for just a few minutes, and it would have been a better day. But it was too late for that now, and she had never, never gotten into an argument she intended to lose, not even when the other Troll was right.

“Everything you’ve been working for? That’s funny, last I saw there were twelve of us. And that’s the real joke, Karkat, you still think this is all about you. Well I’ve got news for you: you’re a petty, whiny grub.”

“Oh, big words,” he replied, “coming from—”

“You’re a self-absorbed rage case—” they were talking at once “—with so little charm and charisma that you couldn’t lead Gamzee to a fireworks display!”

She had only raised her voice a few levels. He, on the other hand, was spitting, almost frothing with every word she poured on, as his fists trembled. “…uppity little do-nothing so obsessed with her fantasy future that she doesn’t recognize real emotion when it reaches out and and—”

“And through all of this it’s become,” she laughed derisively, “pretty obvious that if anyone dies before this is over the only one responsible would be you!”

So he hit her. The swing she had expected, in fact it was the very target of her goading, but neither of them actually expected him to connect. His fist cut across her right cheek in spite of her best efforts. She was already fast and every rung of the echeladder put her hand in the way all the faster, but she had underestimated just how much one got to climb for exiling the Black Queen. All the same, she caught his arm a second too late, seizing him by the arm, fluid despite the injury. They stood in tableau for a good while, both shocked dead by what they had see clear-coming, until Terezi reached up with her free hand and lowered her shades, meeting his eyes with two blasted pupils drowned in milky jaundice. Karkat tried not to meet those eyes. He remembered when he last had, hands sweaty, surrounded in a field of blast-shattered grist and everything right in the world. But now, while her face spoke a cold-stunned mix of emotion, her eyes stared vacant and he could not look at them. Not after the punch, now that they had crossed all bounds of Pity.

Softly, she whispered, “…I win.”

She twisted his arm at an angle it did not want to go and he fell with a cry to his knees as she began to laugh, at first so hysterical in victory – having provoked him to a blind lunge off the precipice of ordered debate – that she had need to catch her breath. When she had finished she repaid him across the face with a backhand and he had to brace himself to keep from hitting the ground. Her laughter returned, now throaty and dark, from manic before to purely intentional. She took ahold of her cane off the loop of her wrist and pressed it to his chest until he lay upon the floor with her looking down from above. Foot replaced cane, the latter striking to the floor aside his ear and bearing her weight, and a triumphant grin of off-stained teeth replaced the laughs, leaving them in a heavy silence.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he shouted to break it, which made her laugh all over again.

She smiled even broader. “Tit for tat, Karkat, and what the hell is wrong with you? Where’s the Karkat I used to know, or did he go snoozing off home to Alternia tucked next to your better half? Besides, can’t a girl have a L1TTLE FUN, K4RK4T?” She leaned slightly forward, the weight on her foot pressing down on his chest. “You got to get up and play His Tyranny for little old me, but I think it’s time to stop being who we’re not. If you wasn’t honest with myself, I’d jUsT gO cRaZy!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re no judge, Karkat. You stood up there just waiting for the evidence to match your conclusion. Any grub can do that. If you were a real judge you’d have hit me with the sentence before you locked eyes on me but you just don’t have the horns for command.”

Karkat scowled and picked at the side of his head. “I’m sorry, say that last part again, I think I had some ‘you’re a fucking bitch’ stuck in my ear.” He pointed his finger into her face and shouted: “I can damn well do anything I want and there’s nothing you can—”

“THEN GET UP HERE!” she said in her mimic of his Trollian voice, stepping off his chest and clasping the hand he had been using to gesture. She crouched down low and he felt her breath on his face. “Get up here, and show me you actually deserve to sit there and call me a traitor, you wriggling coward!”

And she stood up and jerked his arm, tossing him one-handed such that she caught him again behind the neck, just as he gripped her had by the back of the head and they pulled one another into a kiss of spades. Lips locked and grips tightened, most of his weight on hers and hers heavily weighted onto her cane. His free hand grabbed up and clutched at her side, a free-flow of energy jumping hot between them as a dry voice in the back of Karkat’s mind growled over coursing hormones and blinding emotion.

“So good to see,” it said, “that this is how you put up with the crooks… that banish your friends to crazy barren ash-worlds. Just saying. Oh no, by all means, carry on.”

Karkat did his best to ignore the voice and pulled back, just enough, his lips a hair’s breadth from hers and only far enough to say: “Terezi…”

“I hoped that was what you wanted…” she cooed back past a malicious smile.

“Oh yeah, all of it,” he said, gently stroking one of her horns with the tip of his finger.

She cracked another smile. “All of it? You wanted to kiss me and,” she said, squeezing the back of his neck, “get dipped like a girl while doing it?”

“No,” he whispered. He nuzzled his way up her face, tracing a line along her jaw with his nose. “I wanted to kiss you… after you were guilty and grovelling for mercy at my feet.”

She raised an eyebrow, knowing him too well to be surprised by his tone, but before she could finish saying “Like hell—” Karkat had his right arm off from gripping the side of her t-shirt to knock away the cane as he simultaneously kicked out a leg, and he pulled her crashing to the ground. His arm caught the fall; hers did not, and she shouted aloud in pain. Groaning, she curled to one side inadvertently to coddle it, rolling up into his side in an awful mockery of matesprit closeness. He could not help it: it was his turn to laugh. She was right. Being honest was liberating.

“Is this how it’s going to be, you big expert?” she asked into her arm once they had had a chance to rest. Her hair had fallen across her face and she pushed some of it aside with her now only good hand. She captchalogued her glasses as she did, looking up to his eyes as best she could with her own. A teal bruise was beginning to flower along her face where he had first hit her, and no doubt he was developing his own. “You and me just…” she rolled away, onto her back just beside him, “…fighting to see who gets to be in charge and never really winning till… till hell, Karkat, whenever this goes?”

“Sure, I mean, whenever you want, you just throw a fist my way, I’ll block it, we’ll make a big mess of the place, how’s that sound? But most kismets play mind games, I figure you’ll like that. As for your coy little ‘whenever this goes,’ you’re way too much of a huge bitch for me to imagine I’d start gunning for someone else, if that’s what you’re panicked about. Give me some credit.”

“Good,” she whispered, and then in either honest speed or reckless disregard for her the arm on which she rolled, she went roundabout and slammed her fist just off the side of his nose. He cried out as she calmly stepped over, straddled his legs and checked her leg for injuries of her own – a teal scrape and nothing worse. She lay down, settling her elbows on his chest and waited for him to calm down and scowl at her again. “Just a warning,” she said, head cupped in her hands, “I play mean.”

He rubbed his face furiously with his sleeve to clean up blood that wasn’t there. “Thank god, if you didn’t play mean I’d think you were sick.”

She traced a finger along his cheek with a frown. “God I missed you.”

He reached up and pulled her down to him, no preposterous lifting stunt in their way, hands free to hold, teeth to bite; a chance to do what kismets do, before they know better.

Someone tell me if I borked any code or anything. I'm off to dinner.

[Nakkirz]

Felt, Part 3

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After a bit of talk over a hot pot of coffee and a little bit of liquor here and there- including a startling discovery on the part of the taller traveler- Clover and the two travelers decided to let Fin and Trace join their traveling party. The conversation had revealed they had more in common than they’d thought- and a quick affirmation from the cue ball showed that the two ex-con-man brothers would best join their group. Provisions were shared- particularly the coffee, since the tall traveler seemed to be forming an odd passion for the caffeinated stuff- possessions compiled, and soon the two groups were one.

The next morning, as the pink moon rose into sight, the five continued onward in their journey. He often wondered where his friend got his bouts of excess energy when he ran ahead to scout out before them; though it was probably just the coffee, which seemed to be becoming a bit of a problem, it seemed that the new additions were improving morale as well. When they camped, his friend would often joke with Fin over a cup of joe, and Trace would regale the shorter man and Clover with tale after thrilling tale of adventure and fantasy which he’d learned of in his youth. The two had such an appetite for yarns that he started to run out on the fourth day they’d been traveling together. Luckily, that day was far too exciting for the audience to be interested in storytelling.

It began early in the morning, on a bright day; it was getting lighter and lighter, marking the start of a bright period. His friend had sped off in front of the traveling party a little earlier than scheduled at Clover’s bidding; the little man had been a bit on edge for a day and a half. He seemed jumpy and apprehensive, always scanning the horizon for something. Curious, he upped his pace a little to catch up with the diminutive man.

“Clover?” he asked. The short man gave a small yelp and a jump, but then realized it was simply his slow companion.

“Oh. It’s just… you. Phew, sorry about that…”

“What’s wrong?... You’ve been very… unlike yourself, lately…”

“Nothing’s wrong!” Clover replied, flashing a saccharine grin. “N- nothing at all. There’s nothing to be worried about, no siree.”

He didn’t buy it. “You’re acting suspicious. What happened?... Is it something about Fin or Trace?” he asked quietly, keeping his voice down so not to attract the brothers’ attention.

“Oh, no, you silly. Why would I be worried about those two? They’re harmless to us,” Clover snorted. He gave the horizon ahead of them another wary glance. “…nothing, compared to what may be ahead…”

“Huh?... Is there danger ahead, Clover?” Clover gave another start.

“Wh- whuh- why, of course not! I… there’s nothing dangerous ahead of us. I promise! We can handle it. I… I know we can.”

“…It? There is something ahead of us?” his conversation partner asked bewilderedly, beginning to get worried. Clover grimaced, realizing he’d accidentally spilled the beans.

With a sigh, he began to murmur in his companion’s ear: “I was checking the cue ball last night, and… it seemed to be alluding to something nasty that would appear soon. Something nasty, something big… and you never know, what kind of monsters may live out here in the desert… But it seemed to think we could handle whatever’s coming at us…”

“…You keep on referring to it as if it’s got a mind,” he stated uncomfortably. It always put the man on edge when Clover talked about the cue as if it were sentient. It made confusing, dreamlike thoughts flutter up into his slow, analyzing mind, about the strange, muddled memories from when he and his friend were changed.

“Well… I think it kind of do-“

“SHIIIIIIIIIITTTTT!”

All at once, the party froze in their tracks as the curse echoed through the air. Clover was petrified, and the short man beside him as well; Trace and Fin were instinctively reaching for their chests, where each kept a pistol in a shoulder holster. “That sounded like our scout,” Trace said urgently, his eyes severe. “Everyone, huddle up for a sec.” Slowly, the four men drew near each other, every one glancing around anxiously.

Suddenly, a trail of sandy dust was visible- their scout was topping the last sand dune before he reached them. “FUCKSHITDAMN! HELP ME!” he screamed, running right into the group and scattering them like ninepins. Unfortunately, as they all lay sprawled in shock, the tall man’s aggressor appeared with an unpleasant roar.

He was a behemoth, that man; taller than any man he had ever seen, and wider and stronger-looking to boot. The giant treaded angrily through the dune, leaving an indent in the sandy surface, as he went straight for their scout. In a panic, Fin drew his pistol and fired- only to have no effect, other than enraging the gigantic man further.

“WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!?” the fast man wailed, as the gigantic chap suddenly charged at the scattered group before him, roaring in rage. “WHY DID YOU HAVE TO MAKE HIM EVEN MORE ANGRY?!” The short man prepared grimly to be killed; he tried to think of any regrets, but he couldn’t seem to get them straight in his head. It was probably just pre-mortem anxiety that was making his thoughts so jumbled up. If only he could slow down…

He didn’t realize how he’d done it- he hadn’t even noticed himself doing it. All he’d wanted to do was calm himself down, and then he was just… there. He felt like he was in a huge bubble, watching everything go by at a ludicrously high speed- higher speeds than what his friend was hitting. Dazed, he observed the colossal man knock Trace and Fin out of the way like he was brushing away flies, and watched as he pulled his friend- his dearest companion since childhood- into the air by his legs, letting him flail his arms and curse as he growled menacingly. Doze could feel himself panicking again- he wasn’t sure what to do, or whether the fact that what he was watching sped up was a bad thing, and then-

“ASSHOLE, WAKE UP!” Clover was rattling him around hysterically when he returned to normal speed. “Jesus Christ, thanks for zonking out like that, you moron!” he hissed venomously. “Go find Trace and Fin- I can take care of this!”

He took one look between Clover and the gigantic man readying to squish his best friend’s head like a grape, and stayed put. “How?”

“TRUST ME,” Clover said forcefully, his glasses glinting dangerously in the light. The intense expression on the little man’s face was enough to send him scurrying off in search of his party members. Anxious, he began to search through the sand, and luckily quickly unearthed a pair of green-skinned hands.

“Thank god in heaven!” Fin gasped as he pulled him out. “I thought I was gonna suffocate! C’mon, get Trace out! He’s right next to me-“ as they dug and uncovered Trace’s face, they suddenly heard a huge, awful sound. He whirled around in panic, dreading what he would see-

-when he was greeted with the sight of Clover, perched like a parrot on the giant’s shoulder, carefully having the gargantuan man lower his friend to the ground. The noise they’d heard was his loud, deep laughter, which was still coming through in small bursts of chuckles.

“…And then I tried to buy the horse a prostitute!” Clover finished, eliciting another bout of mirth from the giant. “Now, set my friend down nice and easy… there you go.”

“LET GO OF ME, YOU GIANT RETARD!” his friend screeched as he tried to wriggle out of the giant’s grip; eventually, he writhed out, dropping to the ground like an overripe fruit. Immediately, he was at his friend’s side, the taller man clinging to the shorter in shock- and perhaps fear. “That thing tried to KILL ME!”

“...Yes, I know, I know,” he replied gingerly, trying to keep himself from gripping his friend too hard- in all truth, he was just as scared and relieved as his friend, perhaps doubly so.

Then, Clover called down- “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine! It was simply a misunderstanding between him and our friend Cans, here.” With a few words from the miniature man, Cans let Clover down to the ground as well, where the tiny man stood before the giant, looking triumphant and smug.

“…His name is Cans?” Trace asked, looking confused as he dusted sand from his clothes and looked the giant over.

“Well, he didn’t seem to have a name, so… I just… made one up for him! He doesn’t seem to mind, really.” He gave Cans a quick smile, which the giant returned in full. “I think he likes me. Can we keep him?”

“What?! NO! NEVER!!” screamed the tall traveler, still adhered to his friend. “I AM NOT GOING TO TRAVEL WITH THAT MONSTER! IT TRIED TO KILL ME! …SEVERAL TIMES!!”

“He, my friend. Cans is a man,” Clover clarified flatly. Then he continued: “Come on, it was a momentary misunderstanding! I’m sure we’ll all get along just fine now that I’ve explained what happened. And, you fail to think of the benefits.” He sidled up to the man and his friend. “Think of how much he could carry, and how impervious we would be attacks! You saw when Fin shot him- he barely even noticed it! Think of how, if someone were tired or ill, we wouldn’t have to be stranded in the desert- he could carry people, as well! That and I like him and think he should stay. ‘Cause he’s awesome.”

“…He does make… a good point, there…” the short man conceded slowly, giving his friend a glance showing the fleeting regret of a man who has turned on his comrades. Which was, in fact, exactly what he was doing.

For a moment, the taller friend opened his mouth to retort; then, little by little, light dawned on his expression as he realized that logic, once again, had him beat. Then, he pulled a grimace and snarled inwardly, saying, “…W… well, in any case- I am not going ANYWHERE with that BRUTE ‘till someone makes a goddamn pot of coffee!”

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Sorry, no coffee shenanigans I only realized I should have done it well after I wrote this part, and I didn't really wanna edit in an entire new part. I'm totally gonna have to write out the scene in detail once I finish Felt (and my other fic I'm working on. ).
Also, Cans chased after Itchy because he was napping in a sand dune and Itchy ran over his stomach. I don't think anyone would like being awakened like that.

If anyone gets the webcomic reference I snuck in here, cookie for you.

[KarneWarrior]

Is it a MSPA reference?!
Do I get a cookie?!
:P Just kidding.

[Nickie]

Nakkirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrz I love yooooooooooooou 33333333

[kmsumrall]

I love this guy! Least I can do reference?

[CeeJay]

Tuesday, that was adorable, and felt so real to read. I think you nailed characters, and I'm glad that it's Tavros that Kanaya is talking to, because I really want them to be good friends.

[Assassin of Deadpan]

Musical Thrones
Part 1 of 4: Thirteen Card Pickup

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Karkat presided from atop an awkward throne, bubbling soper behind and the guilty-accused afore, grinning like an idiot. She had made a point of stressing that she was going to “represent herself,” which tried Karkat’s thin patience as he had not in any honesty intended to let her have any defence at all. As she continued to ramble so persuasively on the point that there was no actual crime committed in this instance, he lost his temper for the umpteenth, but first decisive, time.

“Why?” he demanded, slamming his fist down on the recouperacoon beside his leg. A stuffed dragon, cyan, tapped against the window on its roof-hanged rope, which Karkat felt added favourably to the milieu, while a pack of computers chimed away unanswered in the corner, which he felt did not. That was the most of it: while they were not alone, the others present were tucked in safely in bed, any dragon not already having been sent to its sentence had been stolen by imps, and all about them there was only graffiti and fluorescence wrapped about them in the carpets and the furniture; a sombre court scene on the wall struck out at the eyes with shock-red lances. All, from floor to ceiling and in between, was overwrote with a hundred white-chalk iterations of the genetic letters “R”, “O”, “A” and “r”, as only befit the respiteblock of the Seer of Mind.

He jumped to his feet and stood straight in her face and made sure she felt the distance. “Why? Were you both sitting around pretending it was the good old days when you were vigilantes feeding post-grubs to a six-storey spider when you went, I don’t know, ‘H3Y VR1SK4, L3TS G3T R1D OF THE ONLY GUY THAT L1K3S US 1N TH1S WHOL3 PL4C3!’”

“Oh my god, you are so terrible at that.”

“Oh, oh, or maybe: ‘Terezi, how a8ought we do something so stratos-fucking-pherically moronic that it’ll torque Karkat’s nu8 like it’s a8out to 8e torn off until Derse comes to finish us off or the Reckoning throws Pulse and Haze on top the White King’s rotting corpse?”

“I’m serious, you’re just absolutely terrible,” she said, grin as broad as ever, her teeth as filthy as the rest of her and all of them with such limited access to hygiene in The Medium. “It’s all a8out the inflection, YOU KNOW WH4T 1 M3AN? But yeah, I can really see why you think this is all about you, Karkat. I mean, besides the ego thing.” She reached up with her can and pushed him away directly between the eyes. “You two must have been half-way through your letters.”

“Letters?”

“‘DEAR LUSUS,’ yours starts. SEE THE INFLECTION, KARKAT, YOU BRING IT FROM THE DIAPHRAM. Or ‘Dear Parents, or Possibly Giant Sgrub Cloning Machine,” for him. ‘I just met the most wonderful boy!’ you both say. ‘HE JUST MAKES ME FEEL SO…’” And she wriggled with theatric pleasure, concluding with a demure smile, short stretch of her arms and punctuating girlish grunt and squeal. “Oh,” she said, “and then he would have probably added, ‘PS: I may have exiled the Queen, destabilised the government and left us defenceless us to Prospit. Hugs!, Jack.’”

Karkat weighed the pros and cons of strangling her with characteristic introspection. “You…” his fingers brushed aside her hair as they inched towards her neck. “Um, excuse me, let’s just backtrack a bit to, oh I don’t know, when YOU were the one that broke the Black Ring? If anyone should be taking a fucking bow for ‘exposing them to Prospit’ it’s the top-hat wearing fucking ringmaster here…”

“Oh you silly, stupid boy.” Ignoring his hands, she reached up through his grasp to pat him on the cheek. “Of course it was me, but that’s not funny.” And then she began to laugh and he had to step back, fists clenching and unclenching, unsure how to even take the first step from there onto semi-solid ground. He paced a touch, checking on the recouperacoon. Gamzee tossed in his sleep, makeup running off the just-submerged corner of his jaw, muttering something about “bats.” Feferi lay across from him, head in arms folded on the far edge, in a prime example of the communal living conditions they had been forced to adopt in the name of strength in numbers. She was having no nightmares, in fact, a smile crept up on her sleeping face and she looked fist to burst. All in all, Karkat felt it was for the better that she faced the wall.

The prosecution took the opening and continued her tangential case. “But seriously, how could it not be all about you? With you as our big scary leader, well! Every plan falling into place, every relationship fixed up nice like it’s some grub jigsaw to you. And well,” she took a step to close the gap between them, and leaned coquettishly towards him. “Well let’s just say I missed your dulcet tones. Why, you just radiate authority these days!”

She cupped her hand again on his cheek. His fists showed him brace himself. Here comes the jab, and god knows he had a cutter ready for it to take her back down to size. To his surprise, she leaned to his ear and spoke in a whisper: “What do you say we wrap up this little trial so you can have the prosecution to your chambers for a short… recess?”

His eyes shot wide, his face fell a mile in terror, and she felt it and broke away with echoing peals of insane laughter. “Oh my god, your face! heheh3h3…” She clutched at her sides. “…H4H4H4H4H4!” He stared agape. “That’s it! That’s all I needed. I’m guilty, put me away, I can’t take it any more!”

Karkat’s expression was quite the opposite. He watched her laugh for a while until she took a break to look up and check the damage, which was substantial. “…don’t do that.”

“Why?” she said, with a dark undertone in her voice, “SOR3 M3MOR13S?”

Karkat knew more than well enough that he had to change the subject, immediately. “Where’s Vriska?”

“Oh, excuse me, Your Tyranny, but I’m only allowed to answer questions that implicate myself. If you want me to implicate someone else, you’ll need evidence.”

Karkat wished he had something to snap or break but ultimately there was nothing he could do to vent his anger without backing down from her. “I saw Vriska there, how’s that for evidence?”

She laughed again. “Oh yeah. Well, hell if I know. She’s probably off hiding, honeymooning with Tavros and celebrating whatever who-knows relationship they have on that big pile of boondollars she got for kicking your ass.” She was not even going to afford him the luxury of fuming to himself that time: “I have to tell you, that was the best thing I saw all day. There was the funniest thing, the worst thing, and the best thing, all in a row. Very tidy.”

Karkat’s thoughts were all over, he needed time to regroup, but he could have done anything better in the entire world than to bid for time by asking: “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Well,” she said, hand stroking her chin, and then, with the casual tone of one recounting a funny story throughout, she recalled: “first you started swinging your curvy little stick at me, and first I was confused, and then you were shouting, and you clipped my leg, and I hit the ground.” He barred his teeth at her, but she pretended not to notice. “So you’ve all left me upset, hurt – emotionally and bleeding – and there’s this squeezing… uh… crushing feeling, like, in my chest? Because I didn’t know why you’re attacking me, you know, uh... you dipshit? Now I know, I know, that doesn’t sound like the funniest part of my day but bear with me.”

He held up a hand in front of her face, not that she seemed to notice that either, though perhaps more legitimately. He interrupted her all the same. “Oh, no, now that’s where you’re wrong. This is already hilarious. You didn’t know what was going on? I catch both of you just seconds after you stuffed an unconscious Jack Noir into a shuttle on autopilot and you expected me to what, break into applause?”

“But then,” she said, pushing aside his hand with a spread of her arms and cutting him off before he could say more, “But then, when you had me down and you could see my face, you’re all like ‘I thought you were an imp,’ with this like, totally devastated tone in your voice?” He couldn’t help it, he actually growled at her, but he knew it wasn’t half going to be enough to shut her up. “And then I got it! It was all just a mistake, and you never meant to attack me and it was funny!” She clapped her hands once, and then leaned forward with her shark-grin leering at him. “And then, ooh, and then, you locked me up and went to try to catch Vriska, and that pain, you know, in my chest? Came back, squeezed really, really hard? And then…” She make a spreading gesture with her hand. “Nothing! And that was the worst part of my day. So glad you asked, by the way.”

“Hey!” he snapped, pointing a finger in her face. “What do you… where do you get off with… HOW DO YOU THINK I WAS FEELING WH—”

“And then,” she finished, rocking on the balls of her feet. “Then she kicked your ass.” Karkat shut up just to stare at her in astonishment, and realized all at once that he had completely forgotten with whom he was dealing, and what she was capable of. “See?” she said, and counted off: “Funniest, worst, best.”

“You can’t honestly have expected me to just let you get away with that,” he said, in what passed for him as a hushed voice, something closer to a normal speaking tone.

She shrugged, her tone slipping a touch as honesty slipped between the cracks in an emotional surge. “I was trusting you to trust me. I trust my ears and nose and tongue to see for me…” At that point it had occurred to her that she had not meant to say any of that out loud, without obfuscation or misdirection. She wrapped up quickly: “...I thought I could trust you, too.”

“All you had to do was tell me,” he muttered. “Email, write all over one of my memos, fuck! ‘H3Y K4RK4T IM GONN4 GO RU1N 3V3RYTH1NG YOUVE B33N WORK1NG FOR M4YB3 W3 SHOULD H4V3 A L1TTLE T4LK 4BOUT 1T.’”

There it was. The perfect opening. All she had to do now was to hit him back at just the right angle and he would collapse under the weight of his own ego, though the cost was high. In leaving himself vulnerable he had struck a blow of his own. She could not argue with his actual point. It was true, all she should have done was to talk to him, have let herself be open for just a few minutes, and it would have been a better day. But it was too late for that now, and she had never, never gotten into an argument she intended to lose, not even when the other Troll was right.

“Everything you’ve been working for? That’s funny, last I saw there were twelve of us. And that’s the real joke, Karkat, you still think this is all about you. Well I’ve got news for you: you’re a petty, whiny grub.”

“Oh, big words,” he replied, “coming from—”

“You’re a self-absorbed rage case—” they were talking at once “—with so little charm and charisma that you couldn’t lead Gamzee to a fireworks display!”

She had only raised her voice a few levels. He, on the other hand, was spitting, almost frothing with every word she poured on, as his fists trembled. “…uppity little do-nothing so obsessed with her fantasy future that she doesn’t recognize real emotion when it reaches out and and—”

“And through all of this it’s become,” she laughed derisively, “pretty obvious that if anyone dies before this is over the only one responsible would be you!”

So he hit her. The swing she had expected, in fact it was the very target of her goading, but neither of them actually expected him to contact. His fist cut across her right cheek in spite of her best efforts. She was already fast and every rung of the echeladder put her hand in the way all the faster, but she had underestimated just how much one got to climb for exiling the Black Queen. All the same, she caught his arm a second too late, seizing him by the arm, fluid despite the injury. They stood in tableau for a good while, both shocked dead by what they had see clear-coming, until Terezi reached up with her free hand and lowered her shades, meeting his eyes with two blasted pupils drowned in milky jaundice. Karkat tried not to meet those eyes. He remembered when he last had, hands sweaty, surrounded in a field of blast-shattered grist and everything right in the world. But now, while her face spoke a cold-stunned mix of emotion, her eyes stared vacant and he could not look at them. Not after the punch, now that they had crossed all bounds of Pity.

Softly, she whispered, “…I win.”

She twisted his arm at an angle it did not want to go and he fell with a cry to his knees as she began to laugh, at first so hysterical in victory – having provoked him to a blind lunge off the precipice of ordered debate – that she had need to catch her breath. When she had finished she repaid him across the face with a backhand and he had to brace himself to keep from hitting the ground. Her laughter returned, now throaty and dark, from manic before to purely intentional. She took ahold of her cane off the loop of her wrist and pressed it to his chest until he lay upon the floor with her looking down from above. Foot replaced cane, the latter striking to the floor aside his ear and bearing her weight, and a triumphant grin of off-stained teeth replaced the laughs, leaving them in a heavy silence.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he shouted to break it, which made her laugh all over again.

She smiled even broader. “Tit for tat, Karkat, and what the hell is wrong with you? Where’s the Karkat I used to know, or did he go snoozing off home to Alternia tucked next to your better half? Besides, can’t a girl have a L1TTLE FUN, K4RK4T?” She leaned slightly forward, the weight on her foot pressing down on his chest. “You got to get up and play His Tyranny for little old me, but I think it’s time to stop being who we’re not. If you wasn’t honest with myself, I’d jUsT gO cRaZy!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re no judge, Karkat. You stood up there just waiting for the evidence to match your conclusion. Any grub can do that. If you were a real judge you’d have hit me with the sentence before you locked eyes on me but you just don’t have the horns for command.”

Karkat scowled and picked at the side of his head. “I’m sorry, say that last part again, I think I had some ‘you’re a fucking bitch’ stuck in my ear.” He pointed his finger into her face and shouted: “I can damn well do anything I want and there’s nothing you can—”

“THEN GET UP HERE!” she said in her mimic of his Trollian voice, stepping off his chest and clasping the hand he had been using to gesture. She crouched down low and he felt her breath on his face. “Get up here, and show me you actually deserve to sit there and call me a traitor, you wriggling coward!”

And she stood up and jerked his arm, tossing him one-handed such that she caught him again behind the neck, just as he gripped her had by the back of the head and they pulled one another into a kiss of spades. Lips locked and grips tightened, most of his weight on hers and hers heavily weighted onto her cane. His free hand grabbed up and clutched at her side, a free-flow of energy jumping hot between them as a dry voice in the back of Karkat’s mind growled over coursing hormones and blinding emotion.

“So good to see,” it said, “that this is how you put up with the crooks… that banish your friends to crazy barren ash-worlds. Just saying. Oh no, by all means, carry on.”

Karkat did his best to ignore the voice and pulled back, just enough, his lips a hair’s breadth from hers and only far enough to say: “Terezi…”

“I hoped that was what you wanted…” she cooed back past a malicious smile.

“Oh yeah, all of it,” he said, gently stroking one of her horns with the tip of his finger.

She cracked another smile. “All of it? You wanted to kiss me and,” she said, squeezing the back of his neck, “get dipped like a girl while doing it?”

“No,” he whispered. He nuzzled his way up her face, tracing a line along her jaw with his nose. “I wanted to kiss you… after you were guilty and grovelling for mercy at my feet.”

She raised an eyebrow, knowing him too well to be surprised by his tone, but before she could finish saying “Like hell—” Karkat had his right arm off from gripping the side of her t-shirt to knock away the cane as he simultaneously kicked out a leg, and he pulled her crashing to the ground. His arm caught the fall; hers did not, and she shouted aloud in pain. Groaning, she curled to one side inadvertently to coddle it, rolling up into his side in an awful mockery of matesprit closeness. He could not help it: it was his turn to laugh. She was right. Being honest was liberating.

“Is this how it’s going to be, you big expert?” she asked into her arm once they had had a chance to rest. Her hair had fallen across her face and she pushed some of it aside with her now only good hand. She captchalogued her glasses as she did, looking up to his eyes as best she could with her own. A teal bruise was beginning to flower along her face where he had first hit her, and no doubt he was developing his own. “You and me just…” she rolled away, onto her back just beside him, “…fighting to see who gets to be in charge and never really winning till… till hell, Karkat, whenever this goes?”

“Sure, I mean, whenever you want, you just throw a fist my way, I’ll block it, we’ll make a big mess of the place, how’s that sound? But most kismets play mind games, I figure you’ll like that. As for your coy little ‘whenever this goes,’ you’re way too much of a huge bitch for me to imagine I’d start gunning for someone else, if that’s what you’re panicked about. Give me some credit.”

“Good,” she whispered, and then in either honest speed or reckless disregard for her the arm on which she rolled, she went roundabout and slammed her fist just off the side of his nose. He cried out as she calmly stepped over, straddled his legs and checked her leg for injuries of her own – a teal scrape and nothing worse. She lay down, settling her elbows on his chest and waited for him to calm down and scowl at her again. “Just a warning,” she said, head cupped in her hands, “I play mean.”

He rubbed his face furiously with his sleeve to clean up blood that wasn’t there. “Thank god, if you didn’t play mean I’d think you were sick.”

She traced a finger along his cheek with a frown. “God I missed you.”

He reached up and pulled her down to him, no preposterous lifting stunt in their way, hands free to hold, teeth to bite; a chance to do what kismets do, before they know better.

Someone tell me if I borked any code or anything. I'm off to dinner.

That was some good stuff. I'M FIRED UP SOMEHOW.

[CeeJay]

Reset Again
Part 1, 2, 4

Part 3

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John had finally made it into the Land of Heat and Clockwork, traveling fast through the shortcuts that Dave had instructed him on. He wiped his forehead and unequipped his rocket pack. The added heat of the device on his back had caused a pool of sweat to form on his lab coat, which felt refreshingly cool when exposed. The relief didn't last long though; the hot atmosphere was relentless here.

He took a moment to catch his breath and examine the surrounding area. Aside from one metal wall, the platform he stood on was exposed, giving him a view of the seas of rolling lava. The one wall that stood was decorated with gears. Rotating, turning gears that served no greater purpose than to distract the eyes of a bored player as he waited for his friend to show up.

"The ability to appear at any time and he still makes me wait," he huffed under his breath.

The sound of a scratching record echoed from somewhere to the left. John spun toward the noise, grinning from ear to ear in anticipation of meeting Dave face to face.

THONK

Something slammed into his head like a sack of bricks. Behind the pain of the blow he felt his knees buckle and he hit the floor of the platform with a thud, wincing as his cheekbone slammed against the metal. He touched the side of his pulsing head and felt the cool, wet mixture of blood and sweat on his fingertips.

He could feel the footsteps clanking behind him and hear the grunt of his attacker preparing to strike again. He rolled quickly to the left just as the weapon was brought down, tearing a piece of his bright green jacket and pinning it to the ground with its spike. He pulled his arm away, ripping off a large chunk of his right sleeve and looked up in terror.

As if the fear of his attacker's near miss wasn't enough to cloud his mind, John was doubly confused by the what he saw above him. A young boy in a black shirt was looking very pissed as he struggled to pull the spiked hammer from the platform. This was no imp or monster this was... himself?

John looked up at his opponent in awe. His heart raced with adrenaline, but he was too stunned to act. He just watched, jaw agape as his other self finally dislodged the deadly looking weapon. When he adjusted his grip and readied it for another swing, John blinked and snapped out of his trance. Oh shit. He meant business.

John rolled again and scrambled to his feet, feeling the wind of a hammer swing just behind him. He rushed forward, nearly tripping as his boots slid on the smooth metal surface. Behind the ringing in his ears he could hear the frustrated grunts of his future self following each barely missed strike.

He reached the gear adored wall and skidded to a halt. He turned, panicked. The full body of Future John slammed him against the metal wall, pinning him down with the hammer's handle pressed to his neck. Future John pushed down and John fought to push back, wincing in pain as the pressure from the metal rod crushed into his adam's apple.

Part 3.5

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There comes a time in everyone's life when they contemplate their own existence. Where did I come from? What came before me? What happens to the world when I am not longer around to experience it? Is there life after death? Is there life before birth?

When you are staring into the struggling face of your younger self as you strangle them to death happens to be one of those times when, despite your attempts to shut them out, these questions enter your mind.

Future John closed his eyes and tried to focus on self preservation, but the whole situation was so confusing. He was murdering himself. How was this supposed to save him? His hands shook with uncertainty and he loosened his hold on the boy in green, who inhaled deeply and coughed as his windpipe refilled. Still, Future John held fast and kept himself pinned, unable to escape.

His mind raced. What exactly was going to happen once he died? Would things really go back to normal? Was this really murder? Was it suicide? Would he feel anything? Would he still really exist if he killed his younger self? He considered his neck and reasoned that he wasn't in pain from the wounds he had caused already. He opened his eyes and looked at himself, scared and helpless against the ticking silver wall. No, this wasn't him. This was someone altogether different. A different person with a different life.

A person who looked like him. Who sounded like him and smelled like him. But it wasn't him. He furrowed his brow and tightened his grip. There was only room in the universe for one John Egbert, and he was not going to let this boy take his place. He was not going to give up a year of life, all his experiences, all the good times he had spent with friends that this doppelganger didn't even know. He pressed forward once again, fighting against the hands that tried to push him back.

"I'm sorry. It's either you or me."

_____
Gah! I hope this doesn't get too confusing. Please, feel free to criticize!
If you were wondering, this fic is 6 parts long. (8 parts long if you want to count parts 0 and 3.5 as individual parts.) The last three parts are still being edited...

[Nakkirz]

I love this guy! Least I can do reference?

VERY YES 3333333333
COOKIES, COOKIES EVERYWHERE FOR YOU.
I love that injoke, lolol.

Also, aaaaaah more Reset! CeeJay, I am loving this story. I hope that both Johns will be okay though ;-;

[kmsumrall]

Cj: I was thrown a little by e change in John but I understood it quickly enough. Looking forward to the rest.

Also, I love cookies and in jokes. To further, 'my brian is melting' and 'my evil powers have gone over there'

[Metaflare]

CeeJay, for some reason whenever an artist also writes something, I imagine their writings in their art style. This story with you art makes me tear up because it's so cute and it shouldn't fit with your story BUT IT DOES AND I DONT KNOW WHY ;-;

[Sushi Database]

The Esoteric Adventures of Zazzerpan the Learned, part eight

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Rose hit the ground wands blazing, blasting every Baize close enough to pose a threat. The wagon had crashed a mere ten feet from the Gate, so they didn't have far to go, but the guards were densest here. Jaspers had the uncharacteristic foresight to squirm out of his harness and grab Lyn before the wagon smashed into splinters on the ground. Rose landed fine on her own, using her second wand to bounce away from the ground and dodge gunfire. The Baize, whatever they were, were smart enough to know that she was the dangerous one; not a single one bothered aiming for Jaspers or Lyn. "Go, go!" Rose shouted to the other two. "Jump into the Gate!"

Path was clear enough, but more of the Baize were filing down the ledge and into the tunnel to join the party. Each one that dared to poke their head into the cave got a blast of plasma for their troubles, but it was only a matter of time before enough attacked at once that one of them got a shot off. Rose dared to take a second to look behind her and saw that Jaspers and Lyn had cleared the Gate. She shot one more Baize, then turned and ran all out to follow them.

The other side was more of the same; guards everywhere and more arriving by the second. Luckily the green bastards couldn't aim for shit. Rose dispatched two at once with bolts of purple lightning and was almost knocked over as another Baize came through the Gate behind her. She stepped to the side of the cave and turned ninety degrees, raising her right wand to extend a plasma sword through the Baize's head. He dropped back through the Gate, his corpse straddling the boundary.

I can't hold them long enough at this rate.

Rose turned around and brought both of her wands to bear on the Gate she had just walked through. Up until now she had assumed that the Gates were just gaming abstractions, like grist and boondollars. But they were out of options; either this would work and they would live to deal with their next problem, or it would fail and they'd be dead anyway. She focused all her concentration on the Gate, channeling a pure will to destroy through her wands. The air in front of her turned purple from the blast.

When the dust cleared from the collateral damage dealt to the tunnel, the Gate was gone. Perhaps she'd destroyed it, or perhaps the magic had just turned it off. It hadn't left behind any debris, so she'd probably never know.

"Rose! More green guys!"

Of course there were. Rose turned and got two headshots off on the Baize that had just turned the corner into line of sight and was knocked off her feet. She lay on the rock ground, dazed. Her right shoulder was stinging terribly but more than that she felt like an invisible pressure was holding her to the ground. She heard a girl scream that of course had to be Lyn.

"Rose! oh no oh no oh no please rose don't die get up dont leave us here"

Rose wanted to tell her to shut up and stop being ridiculous, but for whatever reason the words just failed on her. She reached out with her arm to push herself up and felt sharp daggers of pain lance up her shoulder and into her brain. Gog damn that hurt. "Shhhut up," she managed to mumble.

And then her vision closed into black and she lost consciousness.

~

Rose woke up. Her shoulder still stung but it was a dull pain. She tried to sit up but found that her muscles were not going to make it that easy. "hhhhhey" she said. "What's this."

"Hey, she's awake!" Lyn hovered over her field of vision. "Rose, can you move?"

"Uhhhhh," she said, and tried again. She could move, as it turned out, it just hurt a little. She felt groggy and her head was swimming. She looked around. Dave's room, again. How'd she keep getting back here? "What happened to the tunnel?"

"Rose you got shot!" Jaspers said. She couldn't see him but his voice was right next to her. "You passed out so we dragged you into dave's room to rest!"

"That's what getting shot is like? It sucks. Did I lose a lot of blood? I feel kind of woozy."

Lyn looked over in Jasper's direction, then back at Rose. "Nnnnno, um... you lost a little blood but then you just fainted. It was kind of a crazy few minutes."

"...How did we get back in here?" Beyond the walls Rose couldn't see the tunnel, or anything for that matter. It looked exactly the way it had the last time she'd been in here, with darkness all around. She glanced up at the ceiling, afraid she might see the horrible form of Shib-Nyugragoth, but he was still hidden behind... what had Dr Moon said? "An invisible fold in space."

"I dunno, we just kind of went to where it looked like there should be a door and I was able to pass through it! I don't think the Baize can see the room, Rose! I can, and Jaspers can, but none of the green guys react to it!"

Rose nodded weakly. "Like the pocket plane familiar in-"

"-The Adamantine Artificer, yeah, that's what I was thinking too."

Rose tried to sit up again and her muscles reluctantly relented. Her shoulder had good reason to hurt but the rest of her was just being stubborn, and Rose had no patience for it. "How long have we been here? In here, I mean? How long was I out?"

"Five hours. rose, you should lie back down! you haven't had time to heal yet!" Now Jaspers was within her field of vision. He was pouting, and the expression looked almost comical. Like the 3 in his :3 face had been turned upside-down. She tried to imagine what Dave would (ironically) caption to it. Something like "Sadcat is disappointed with your life choices", perhaps.

"We don't have time for that, remember?" Rose tried to touch the wound on her shoulder and was rewarded with more daggers of pain. Of all the times for the universe to stop operating on hero physics, it had to be when the enemies started carrying guns. "Jaspers, I need you to look after Dave. He's helpless right now, I'm not."

"Maaaan! why can't cal do it?"

"Because Cal is- ergh!" she rose to her feet. She would have to remember to use her left arm to brace herself, awkward though it was. "Because Cal is an imbecile and I don't trust him to protect Dave. Don't be difficult, Jaspers. I'll be fine, I've got Lyn here."

Rose didn't think she'd be fine, and definitely didn't think an eight year-old girl without any magic was a legitimate substitute for her sprite, but she still didn't trust the linear flow of time between this world and the waking one. Five hours here could be five hours on LOHAC, but it could also be days, or even weeks. It was too dangerous to risk leaving Dave alone- whatever dramas she had gotten herself involved in, Dave was still their ticket to fixing the timeline and saving John and Jade. In comparison, her own survival was trivial.

Jaspers pouted, but he was a good cat, and he knew where his tuna came from. He opened a hole in space and started climbing through it. "Rose, let me know if you need anything! you can just think it really loud and i'll hear!"

As soon as Jaspers was gone, Rose turned to Lyn. "I'm going out. You're staying here. We're not debating it."

"Rose, you've been shot! Come on, let's wait for Jaspers to get back from checking on that guy!"

Rose shook her head. "No, I'm not waiting in here. This room is anchored to me; for it to move, I have to move. Right now the room is next to the scene of our break-in. If we wait longer, the place will be full of more Baize, on around-the-clock guard. We need to get out of here now."

Lyn looked hurt for some reason. "Okay, so give me a wand and I'll cover your back! I could do the wizard thing!"

"I'm pretty sure they only work for me. There's no point in you risking it by coming along. You should wait in here so I don't have to worry about protecting you." Rose grimaced. "You're a nice girl, Lyn, and you have great taste in books. But I really don't have time to babysit you right now. I have my own problems to deal with."

"You could've at least kept Jaspers along long enough to help you get to safety! Come on, you've been shot!"

"Jaspers is going to have his own troubles to deal with, I think. I saw some of his future while I was unconscious. Dave is going to need his help."

Lyn sat down on Dave's bed suddenly, scowling. "Fine. I'll just hang out here, totally BORED and you can go have adventures. That's totally fair."

"Don't be immature about this. I'll be right back in a few hours. Stay in here and... play on Dave's computer, I guess."

"It isn't frozen?"

"It wasn't earlier. I don't know, do something. Stay out of trouble." Rose eyed the bedspread. "Hand me that sheet, off the bed. I need to make a disguise."

Lyn handed her the sheet, but looked worried. "Please don't die out there, okay? I don't want to be alone in this place."

"Don't worry so much." Rose wrapped the bedspread around her like a shroud. "How do I look? Can you tell I'm still human?"

"You don't look like those green guys, so kind of."

"Eh. Well, it'll have to be good enough." She thought about it, then leaned forward and kissed Lyn on the forehead. "Just relax, okay? Stay here and stay calm and I'll be right out as soon as I can."

With that, Rose peeked out the door.

The tunnel that had been the entrance to Gate Customs was currently empty as far as she could see. The area had been roped off with yellow CAUTION tape, presumably to preserve the crime scene, but there were no Baize guarding anymore. The corpses were still there, though, and that realization made Rose shiver. These Baize might or might not be cannon fodder created by Sburb to give her something to destroy, but it was at the very least clear that they were not made of grist. When a Baize dies, they leave behind a corpse. Somehow, the distinction seemed to change everything for Rose.

She looked both ways. Well, no point lollygagging here longer than she had already. She ran down the tunnel hallway to the door that had produced the Baize that shot her. Through the doorway were the bodies of the two Baize. She didn't know which of them was responsible for the pain in her shoulder, but... they seemed to have both paid for it. Beyond the door was a small office with two desks. It was a room for paperwork, with no other doors. Nothing interesting here. Rose exited the office and headed into the second door, right across from it.

This room had only one light overhead, a table in the middle of the room and a chair on each side. It's purpose was obvious to anyone who had watched more than fifteen minutes of television crimedrama. This was an interrogation room. There were no bodies in here, but there was a horrible smell Rose could not identify, something like kerosene and... something else. She returned to the hall and shut the door behind her.

The facility wasn't big, as it turned out. She followed the stairs up to the second level, which just had a few more empty offices, but from there the tunnel led out to... well, what it was she wasn't sure, but she could hear it from here. A city, it sounded like.

Rose emerged from the tunnel into the light. Outside the tunnel there were a few cars parked, and one Baize was standing guard, but whatever he thought he was guarding against, Rose wasn't part of it. The Baize barely noticed her. Probably he just wasn't very good at his job, but inwardly Rose hoped her shroud disguise had hidden her. Beyond the parking lot for Gate Customs was the city.

The city was bustling.

Rose had been to Las Vegas once, when her mother had had a conference there. She spent most of the time in the hotel reading, but on one night she had walked with her mother through the casino and watch her while she'd played Blackjack. She remembered that her mother had lost two rounds, and won big in the third round. She'd used the difference between her win and her losses to buy Rose a bag of skittles. That had been a good night. This city bustled, not the way the city of Las Vegas had but like the casino itself. From all directions there was the sound of jingling coins, of laughter, and of drinks being poured. And everything was green. The metal, the roads, the streetlights. Most of the people were green, too, but not all. There were some black and white carapaces among the crowds, and even a few creatures that looked like prototyped imps.

Rose started walking down the sidewalk, which seemed to be covered in a thin layer of fabric. To her left she had the road, blocked up with a long line of green cars, each with a subtly different tint. To her right, a small bar was lined up parallel to the sidewalk. It was like a hotdog stand, but with a bar instead, with little stools and a bartender. An imp with two heads and a funny moustache was nursing a highball glass of something amber colored at the far end of the bar.

They probably don't check IDs, she thought. Her shoulder hurt like hell, and anything that could numb it was worth trying. Rose walked up to the bar and knocked on it twice. "Oy. Shot of... alcohol."

The bartender was a thin Dersite wearing cat ears and missing an arm. He stared at Rose. "Any kind in particular, ma'am?"

What was a good alcohol? She wracked her brains. She'd had, what, vodka? That had been terrible. She didn't think she was a vodka girl. What other drinks were there? Maybe... what did heroes drink? Mead? In every fantasy book she'd read, heroes drank either mead, beer, or wine. She didn't really know what mead was (beer was the stuff normal people drank while watching sporting events, wine was the stuff made from grapes) but she knew it was a hero's drink. "I'll have a glass of, um, a flagon of... mead."

The bartender raised an eyebrow and checked the cabinet behind his head. "Mead." He turned and yelled at the wall behind him. "Hey, yo, Chai, we gottany mead?"

A raspy voice responded, "what, like... fer vikings? I dun think so, boss."

The bartender shrugged at Rose. "We ain't got any mead. What's in mead anyway?"

Rose looked helpless. "I-I don't really know. I thought maybe you would."

"Hrm." The bartender turned around again. "Chai, what's in mead?"

"I dunno. Like honey, right?"

The bartender nodded slowly and lowered to search a cabinet under the bar. He came out with a bottle that had a picture of what looked like Groucho Marx. Groucho had bees flying around his head and was shrugging as if to say "Eh, whaddamigonnado? Trapped on a bottle with all these bees!" The bottle was labeled as UNCLE JULIUS' FAVORABLY FLAVORED OLDE-TYME HONEYJACK. The bartender held up the bottle to Rose, gesturing "this good?"

She nodded. Whatever honeyjack was (and whoever Uncle Julius was), it was as good as any idea she had. "Uh, for payment... do you accept... boondollars?"

"Not tonight we don't."

Rose glanced to the side. Was she going to have to drink and dash? "Um, what currency do you accept?"

"No currency. Aint you heard the news? Whaddid you think the crowds was about? Duke Candles has declared a city-wide shindig to celebrate the capture of the witch of space." He set the glass of honeyjack- which was a light gold color- down on the bar and pushed it to Rose. "We gottan official voucher says all the giggle water goes on his high-and-mighty's tab, so party it up."

Rose intended to. She picked up the glass and sipped the honeyjack. It was sweet to taste, and the sweetness masked the alcohol well. It burned at the back of her throat pleasantly. She was taking her second sip when she realized she had ignored what the bartender had said. "What was that about the Witch of Space? She's here?"

"Ohhhh yeah. Big time. Practically old news by now, it's been a few weeks, but the party doesn't stop." He grinned at this. "Hope it doesn't, neither. When folks know the duke is covering their tab they cut loose, and we been laughing all the way to the bank. The duke has deep pockets."

"I should bet," Rose said, sipping the drink. "But you were saying about the Witch? How was she brought in? I understand she was quite... formidable."

"Naah, not to the Lord. Just another paradox-chumparino like the rest of 'em. I don't pity the jane, I tell you I don't. She'll rot in that Dungeon fore Candles is done with her."

"Yeah?" Rose finished off the drink and motioned for him to pour another. She was lightheaded but found that she could tune out the pain in her shoulder now, if she wanted to. "You know much about those dungeons?"

The bartender was looking down, apparently focused on pouring the honeyjack. "Eh, and what would it be to ya if I did?"

Rose suppressed an urge to pull out her wands. Violence would only lead to a scene, especially if there were Baize in this city who could recognize her wands and identify her as the intruder that had attacked the Gate. She had to do this the diplomatic way, at least until she knew more about how this city worked. Besides, this bartender didn't mean any harm, he was just trying to do what was appropriate in this place. "I bet I could find something valuable for anyone who could... entertain my curiosity on the subject."

"Yeah?" The bartender definitely looked interested now. "Well, maybe I know somebody who knows somebody who knows something and maybe I doesn't. But maybe, y'know, my memory ain't so good."

"Talk to Venti," the imp sitting at the bar said with the head that had a mustache. The bartender turned and scowled at him. "C'mon, Daps. Don't give the girl a hard time. Anyone wants to know what goes on in the Dungeon, they go to Venti."

The bartender screwed the top of the bottle of honeyjack bottle back on and returned it to the cabinet, apparently no longer in a mood to pour drinks. "Yeah, I was gonna tell her, anyway. Y'dont gotta give me the business over it."

"Venti?" Rose asked. For some reason it made her think of bookstores.

"Venti's Vendy, yeah," the bartender (Daps?) said. "Runs a pawn-shop on the innersection o' 20 and 20th. Good guy. Was gonna tell you about him." He shot the imp a dirty look. "When the conversation rolled 'round to it. Y'wanna know about the Witch, Venti's the guy. Might even have some stuff from the capture."

Rose nodded slowly, then finished her second drink. "Well, thank you very much for the drink. Drinks. I'll be on my way, I suppose." She climbed down off her stool, almost falling in the process.

The rest of the barflies watched her go. The Dapper Drinkslinger clucked his tongue, disappointed. "Had to snitch on my game, 529? Just wanted to see what she had on her. Wasn't gonna take anything."

The imp waved a claw dismissively. "C'mon, Daps. She didn't have anything. Probably just an exile. Poor gal."

"She look like a Prospit dame to you? She talked like Prospit, but she was tan. And short."

"I thought she seemed nice!" Chai called out from behind the wall.

"Yeah, well, nice or not, rules are rules." The Drinkslinger picked up the phone behind the counter and punched the dial. "Yeah. Yeah, it's me, Dap. Y'told me to call you if something ever seemed hinky. Well, I think I found something. Just a girl, Prospit dame. Got awfully curious about the Witch, so I sent her to Venti's. Y'can pick 'er up from there. Okay. I'll see to him when he comes by. Bye."

Imp 529 just watched sadly. Not a soul in the Table could help that girl now. The Sticks were notoriously brutal and thorough. Poor gal. Whoever she'd been.

[Valter]

Are numbered imps a thing now? I'm okay with this.

[raequiem]

SkaianRedeemer: Ohmygodyes. It's rare to find any fic that gets the whole romantic hate thing of kismesis right, and you get it SO right. Also, this.

Ceejay: Oooh, getting philosophical, aren't we? Very nice - can't wait for more!

Sushi: Loving the carapace. And "sadcat is disappointed with your life choices" - I will find a way to use that in conversation, because it's hilarious. Moar!

[silrini]

Bah. While Andrew was making the flash, I went back and re-read all of Homestuck. ALL of it(except the intermission), just barely finishing in time for the flash. XP In any case, I'd sorta had this idea in mind anyway, and then I re-read all the things with Dave and his bro before SBURB took them into the Medium, and I dunno. I just really felt this needed to be written. Especially when you remember what Dave left with on his meteor. ^__^

Ah Hell No

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Staring at the crater, your mouth twitched into a wry smile. Dammit but the witch had had it right all along. You supposed that meant you had lost this round, but ah well. You’d get her back.

You did feel a bit of regret and guilt about the shop though. Fortunately it had been closed today anyway(a bit of your work; just because you and Lalonde had a cat and mouse game going didn’t mean you were going to be stupid about her warnings), so the only thing really lost was all the records. A tragedy to be sure, but hey, sacrifices had to be made. You pulled out a tiny pair of the pointy anime shades you yourself were wearing. If you were going to have to take care of this kid, like Lalonde and that old billionaire insisted, you were going to make sure that he or she learned all about the different nuances of being cool and ironic. Someone had to carry on your legacy, despite Lalonde’s pointed remarks.

You slid down into the crater, waving away the smoke. You thought you heard something, like a neigh or a whinny, and you peered through the smoke, trying to make out shapes. Fortunately it was beginning to disperse anyway, and you could see the remains of the meteor, and a large, four-legged creature that clopped its way to you softly…ah hell no.

“There is no way you are keeping the pony.”

I have ideas for more of them, because I dunno, I find the Guardians fascinating.

[JudgeDeadd]

Aha, a Brofic! I actually had an idea for writing something like this, but absconded because I couldn't make it sound good in my head. Yours is shorter than what I had in mind--and better.

[Sushi Database]

yeah silrini diggin the brofic

I'd like to see more examining how he connects to Mr Egbert, Ms Lalonde, and crazy Grandpa Harley.

[CeeJay]

Silrini, that was awesome. I would luv to read more brofic.

"Especially when you remember what Dave left with on his meteor. ^__^"

My first ever Homestuck fanfiction was about what happened to Maplehoof after this scene, so I totally luv this story even more for showing me the Bro and Dave side of it.

[Valter]

Okay, I'm going to drop a small excerpt of the massively long fic I'm working on right now. It's not the very start, so some of the early lines might not completely make sense, but I think it was the most interesting early sample to use.

(note that "small excerpt" in this case means pretty long, if only because of how off-the-wall crazy long the full thing's going to be.)

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The Black Queen smiled thinly as Jack reluctantly put on his outfit and hat. "Now, was that so hard?"

Messing with Jack was a favorite past-time of hers. He needled so easily. He had certainly been more petulant than usual recently, but she didn't particularly care. He knew who was in charge, and he was too much of a wimp to cause any real trouble when he got insubordinate. Sometimes he threw the furniture around, but he always got back in line after a bit of venting.

"Oh, but I can see what you meant earlier, now. The replacement I ordered could hardly stand up to the stature of the original uniform."

Jack looked at her warily. "...What are you getting at?"

"Well, I brought a few more for you to try on..."

"Oh- oh no. Fuck that. I'm not going to play dress up while-"

"Yes you are, Jack, because I told you to," The Queen interrupted, while leaning closer to the disgruntled archagent, "and my orders are always followed."

"NO!" Jack shouted, and he followed up his interjection with a swing from his Regisword that the queen lazily dodged. He looked angrier right now than he ever had before, which was quite an achievement for someone who spent much of his time nearly frothing at the mouth. "You've wasted all of your power sitting on your ass in the furthest ring instead of winning the war." He snarled and ripped the clothes he was wearing to shreds. "At least the King is bumbling around on the battlefield. You chose to be completely useless instead!"

"Hmph." The Queen removed her own sword from the sheath in her stomach. "So the dog grows a spine at last. For what it's worth, Jack, you were actually a fairly capable assistant. I'm going to feel so bad about murdering you for the treacherous statements you just fired off."

"I'm not going to die today," Jack said as he reached for the green package on his table, "I wouldn't have challenged you if I didn't know I would be victorious!" He opened the box, and its contents leaped out and onto the floor between Jack and the Queen.

It was possibly the strangest thing the Queen had ever seen. It was a rabbit, patched over with yarn and robotics, and... armed to the teeth with incredibly powerful weaponry. Okay, scratch that. It was possibly the most dangerous thing she had ever seen. "Where did you get that, Jack?"

"'where' isn't important, Queen. What matters is that your death is imminent! Get her!" The rabbit coiled itself up, tightened its grip on the broken sword in its left hand, lunged at the Black Queen...

and disappeared.

The Black Queen opened her eyes. What had just happened? She was still alive, and the weapon was gone. If she could only get a few minutes to sort out her thoughts-

"What did you do? How did you do that?!"

Hm. She wasn't going to get much peace with Jack in the room. The Black Queen lashed out at him with her tentacles, and brought him under a brutal choke-hold. "You will answer me first, Jack. Where did you get that box?"

"I- I won't-"

"Still you think you can deny me!" She threw him across the room. He hit his table, knocking it over and spilling documents everywhere. She grabbed him again before he could rouse himself, and this time dangled him out the window by his neck. "I haven't the patience to deal with you right now, Jack. The fall probably won't kill you; you're a pretty tough boy. It will break most of the bones in your body, though. I'll send someone to scrape you off the ground later. Perhaps then we can talk in more detail then."

She let go, leaving Jack to the capricious whims of gravity, and immediately turned her attention back to Jack's office. Perhaps the origin of whatever that Weapon was could be found among the pile of papers spread out all over the floor?

Most of the documents were useless (although she was amused to find a fair number of them had crude drawings of her alongside various colorful expletives). The only notable item relating to the Weapon was the green box it had come out of, which she now noticed had two handwritten letters inside.As she read the notes, her eyes narrowed. The reason for the Weapon's appearance and subsequent disappearance were suddenly abundantly clear.

Temporal shenanigans.

The Knight of Time was amongst the Four; he must be responsible for this, even if the Witch was the one who wrote the letter. Er, the first letter. Maybe the Knight of Time wrote the other letter? No, he already knew John...

Being so obviously in the dark frustrated the Queen, but she still had enough information to extrapolate some conclusions from. The Weapon had clearly gone through many temporal modifications before reaching Jack's hands. It would be unstable at that point, probably only able to exist in the timeline that spawned it. Which meant that... the timeline had been split. The Knight had split the timeline into two parts, and she was apparently on the wrong side of it.

No... the right side. She was probably not in the "proper" continuity now, considering that the Weapon undoubtedly had some significant role to play that had not been fulfilled, but if she were on the other side of the split she would undoubtedly be dead right now and Jack would be doing a merry jig over her corpse.

...Did time even work like that? Ugh. This was why she hated time travel. She had figured out most of what she needed to know. Best to leave that train of thought be for now.

So, she knew what happened, and how it happened. The only thing left to figure out was why the Knight would feel the need to fuck up the time stream in the first place.

The answer to her final question would come in the form of an explosion.

~~~~

TG: rose i need your help
TT: Will it take long? I need you to do a favor for me.
TG: yeah well that can wait
TG: put on your psychotherapy cap or something
TT: Psychotherapy...?
TT: What are you getting at?
TG: would jade lie about something
TG: i mean does she seem like a big kidder to you
TT: What?
TT: I would need context, I guess.
TT: Could you take a quick screenshot of my room and send it to me? I need to check something.
TG: heres your context
TG: GG: i can't talk!
TG: GG: john's dead
TG: see i have to ask you because she isnt responding to pesters right now
TG: just dropped that knowledge bomb and sauntered off to gog knows where
TT: ...
TT: I think the picture can wait for now.
TG: yeah, no shit

~~~~

The Black Queen was still in Jack's office when the detonation occurred. She ran to the window to investigate, and found the explosion's source immediately: one of the four orbs had shattered, and apparently in rather spectacular fashion. Shrapnel was still flying through the air, although none of it would reach the Royal Quarters.

The orbs were usually completely indestructible. Any weapon could be taken to them without the slightest effect (she personally knew this from her younger, more inquisitive days). There was only one thing that could destroy an orb: the death of its owner.

The Heir of Breath was dead.

...One of the Knight of Time's friends was dead! Maybe that would be worth splitting time over. Finally, she had the answers she needed. With this, she could-

*shkt*

"Next time you throw me out a window, Your Majesty, you might want to pay a little more attention and make sure I actually land. Rather than, say, catching a hold of the side of the building."

Jack stood framed in the window he had been dropped out of earlier, carrying the Queen's sword in his hands and grinning a grin of pure malice.

I'll hopefully be done the full thing in about a week's time, If I'm lucky.

[Ledundead]

Looks great! I can't wait to read it!

[CeeJay]

Valter, that is captivating. Temporal shenanigans are the best shenanigans.


Reset Again
Part 1, 2, 3

Part 4

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Future John wiped his bloody nose with the back of his wrist. Looking up from his position sprawled back against the metal floor he could see his doppelganger hunched over on his knees gasping and wheezing for breath behind the boy who had decked him moments before.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Dave asked, wiping his bloody knuckles on the side of his red suit.

"Back off," he gripped his hammer and started to stand, "This is between me and myself."

Dave drew his sword and took a defensive stance between the two Johns. "Look, you're my bro, but I am not afraid to kick your ass if you're going to be stupid."

Future John surveyed the situation. Just moments ago he had been about to finish the job when Dave appeared and punched him hard in the face. It had been a year since he had last heard from Dave, and months since he had even thought of him. It wasn't like he was expecting a warm welcome.

"Don't call me your bro," he huffed, "You destroyed my life, and now I have to clean up your mess."

"Destroyed your life? I keep having to save your gullible rump."

"You killed me!"

Dave pointed back at the younger John. Future John could barely see his terrified eyes behind the reflection on his glasses. "You wouldn't be here if I hadn't stopped you from..."

Future John's blood began to boil with rage, making the lava world's heated air feel cool in comparison. "You killed me you jackass!" he screamed. "ME!” He lunged at Dave, who sidestepped and stuck his leg out to trip him. In his fury he tumbled over the limb, cursing himself for falling prey to the oldest trick in the book. He slammed back onto the steel floor that he was becoming familiar with.

Future John was sick of this. He just wanted to go home. He wanted to live again. “Why did you stop me?!” he shouted, picking himself up again. “I was happy.”

“Happy being dead?” Dave asked in disbelief.

"Do I look dead to you?" Future John asked, waving his hand up and down across his body.

"I don't know what the hell other alternate universe of time shitanigans you came from, but you died when you went through that gate. My future self came back and we convinced you not to go. That's the reason you're alive now."

"That's the reason I'm dying now!" He just couldn't get through to this guy.

"No."

Both Dave and Future John were shocked to hear the weak voice speak for the first time. They turned to John, who was carefully touching his bruised throat. The red and blue marks spread across his skin like tie dye.

"You have to believe him," John pleaded to his future self, "He's my, our, best friend. I trust him. Please."

"Best friend?" Future John scoffed, "Didn't you hear him? He was in the future for nearly a year without you. And in that time he never contacted us. Not even when I tried. When I needed a friend this past year, he wasn't the one who was there."

In that very moment, Dave was silently thankful that he had placed himself in front of the John he knew. He wouldn't have wanted him to see his cool demeanor slip to reveal how much those words hurt.

He composed himself quickly, shaking his head. "No way, man. You're wrong. If I didn't contact you it was because you were dead. You can't message a dead person."

"You keep talking about me being dead like it's no big deal. You really don't care," Future John spat.

Dave was about to snap. "I WOULD NEVER LET YOU DIE!"

Out of nowhere a blur of orange shifted between Dave and Future John. Davesprite fanned out his wings to block Dave and John from view and faced off with Future John. Future John stepped back, confused and cautious of the strange Dave-like figure with a sword in its stomach.

"You wanna talk now?" Davesprite asked, his voice much calmer and more serious than his younger self. "Alright, let's get this mess cleared up. Talk to me, I'm the one that's been to the future."

Future John blinked. Something about this just wasn't right.

"Look," Davesprite confessed, "Every moment in the future... knowing that you were dead hurt. But that's why I had to keep going. I had to learn more, to get stronger. So I could protect you, and Jade, and Rose. But I always knew I would come back for you, man. I would never just leave you. And I'm not going to let you kill yourself now."

Future John wasn't listening. Something about this just wasn't right. He reached out to touch Davesprite, but stopped. His outstretched hand curled into a fist and he dropped it to his side. This wasn't right at all.

"Why are you still here!? Why aren't you fading away?"

Davesprite looked confused.

"You're from the alternate future... Don't you feel it!?" Future John questioned. Every moment he could feel the sting of nonexistance as it chipped away at his life. Eating away the past year, second by painful second. Why was Future Dave unaffected?

"When I came back to save you I prototyped myself with the kernelsprite. I'm not really Future Dave anymore, I'm Davesprite. That voids the timeline paradox, I guess."

"Bullshit!" Future John wiped his sweating hands on his pant legs and brandished his hammer once more. "I'm sick of this. I'm going back home." He swung at Davesprite, the spiked hammer's head flew clean through Davesprite's body. While he flinched, Future John rushed past, readying his hammer for another strike. He aimed for his younger self's head. This time he would simply smash his brains out. It would be quick and effective if he could only land the hit.

As he brought the hammer down his legs were pushed out from under him by a flying tackle from Dave. Future John greeted the hot metal floor once again.

_____
I should be finished editing parts 5 & 6 fairly soon. I want to post them together.

Thanks so much Nakkirz, kmsumrall, Metaflare, and rae. I really appreciate your kind words and support. I've been so nervous/frustrated over this particular fanfiction, it means a lot to me to hear your comments.

And kmsumrall, thanks for mentioning that change in Johns. One of the biggest challenges here (besides stepping out of my fluffy comfort zone) is keeping the two Johns straight, especially since I want to emphasis that they aren't the same character. I'll try my hardest to keep the changes clear.

[TheAngryBeard]

I'd just like to say that it's nice to see someone ELSE having time shenanigans for once. Not everyone handles it as smoothly as Dave, clearly.