Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Yes, the universe had a beginning. Yes, the universe continues to evolve. We are not simply in the universe, we are a part of it. We are hatched from it. One might even say that we have been empowered by the universe itself to figure it out — and we have only just begun."
—Starsail Degrasse, Chief Astronomurderer of the Imperial Fleet (later executed), from The Greatest Story Ever Told

What seizes her most when she looks down, eyes snapping open like a thunderbolt, is not the grey pallor of her arms or the strange symbol on her shirt or even the outlandish colouration of her surroundings. It is her heartbeat, strong and sure, pumping in her chest as though she's just run a five-minute mile. There's a vertiginous euphoria that overwhelms her as the rhythm floods through her arteries; it is an irrefutable sign of what she can scarcely believe to be true: she is alive.

Her pulse pounds like a jackhammer against her ribcage, her feet trip over themselves as she runs like she's never known the ground against her feet before, and adrenaline injects itself in her mind with a thrilling whirlwind of disorientation, excitement, and fear. The memories come back one by one as she winds around the dark hallways in search of something familiar.

A flash of recollection erupts in her skull. She remembers a bathroom utterly defaced, its toilet extracted in the commission of some ridiculous game. She can hardly contain a laugh; it seems so absurd, and yet she feels there is something unassailably important about it all. She slows down as she finds the door that she realizes she already knows leads to the bathroom, and turns to flick on the light.

It's dim, but it's more than enough, and her eyes fixate on their reflection in the mirror. Somewhere, her mind files away an off-handed observation that her eyes are a raiment of golden yellow encircling grey; it doesn't register immediately in her mind that something is off about it all. All she feels, all she knows, is the overwhelming rush of relief coursing through her, arresting her nerves into a state of complete relaxation.

Her smile is interrupted by a wicked jab and the salty, metallic tang of blood in her mouth. Reflexively she spits into the sink, and there is no mistaking the colour of what comes out.

There's a violet stain in the washbasin, and all at once she feels her heart come to a grinding halt.

Rose Lalonde remembers dying. She remembers the whiteout pain of the Slayer's scimitar gliding through her heart, the split-second snapshot of the chaos around her, as everything she had worked for slowly fell to pieces. She remembers the promises she made, the promises betrayed, when she told her friends she had an answer. She remembers the planning, the steely-eyed preparation, the battle-lines and schematics that she had drawn, mind aching with the horrible premonition that she was wrong, that she was leading them into failure.

All she had wanted was safety.

The other details seem insignificant now—her black shirt with a whorled violet sigil, her old lavender skirt rendered in the same dark hue, black leggings she never recalls owning—and her focus settles squarely on the single fact of the strange new feeling of sharp teeth packed into her mouth. After a moment of her tongue lolling over the sharp spike of her canines, Rose brings her hand back into her field of vision, the slippery warmth of blood spilling onto her fingers and under her long nails.

She chances another look in the mirror.

What greets her in the mirror is shocking, to say the least, but still familiar on some level. Going over her features, she looks to herself mostly as if someone had taken her and filled her in with different colours, as long as she ignores the most obvious differences. She spends several minutes contemplating these features close enough to human that Rose still sees herself somewhere in the pallid, ash-grey reflection, but deviating enough that every little distinction demands attention, separately and specifically. The horns, the fangs, the set of gills nested in her neck, and, she finds as she brushes back her hair, the small spines growing out of her pointed ear, with three delicate lobes of flesh growing from the base, all are entirely strange and foreign, both to her eyes and to the sensations they elicit.

She looks over the three-tined ears fluttering from the side of her face and the violet-stained gills several times, bringing one hand experimentally to touch them gingerly, and flinching when they finally make contact. For the first time, Rose becomes aware of what it is like to sneeze from one's ears. Meanwhile, the horns are no doubt the most alarming difference. In her nest of her newly coarse, pitch-black hair, a pair of slender, sunburst points erupts from her scalp. These, too, are entirely new, with nothing against which she might compare them. Fascination and fear once again meld together, her hands unable to keep away from feeling the ribbed, keratinous extrusions that are part of her now, a part of her body she can't even begin to formulate in her mind as belonging to her.

There was an aching gap in the mind of Rose Lalonde where prophecy once lay, where the Light's whisperings would slide thoughts into the deepest, darkest recesses of her subconscious. A keen sense of loss took its place, her prophetic visions felt more in their absence than in their presence. Too late, she recognized that she had denied her true nature, had spurned the quiet warnings clinging to her ragged edges, and that oversight proved her unmaking. That's what you get for playing chaotic neutral, Rose chided herself drily, but she doesn't smile. She wasn't even sure she could smile, right now.

And what did it get her? A death, another death just like the first time she tried to do the very same thing. Rose shivered at the parallels, now that she thought about them, now that she saw them with a hindsight she had disregarded. And when all was said and done, her sacrificial death did nothing to prevent the same for the only family she had left. That, more than anything else, was what made her angry. A dark and abiding anger curdled within her as she reckoned with the seeming inevitability of an eternity spent a wandering, ethereal vector, nothing more than a vestigial fragment of her memory. She couldn't let it end like that.

When she called on the Furthest Ring, they listened.

Rose blinks, and takes in her visage once more. She moves an arm, and watches how it follows in the mirror. After leaning in and inspecting her face more closely, she almost reaches the point of declaring, not bad, troll Rose, but the whole train of thought seems ridiculous, and the more businesslike, grounded part of her mind tells her that there are definitely more important things to think about than her judgment of how attractive her troll self is. She barks a harsh, hollow laugh; it's too absurd to consider further, and instead she begins to formulate a practical checklist. First on the list is making sure her friends are unharmed.

She darts back through the hallways, with considerably more grace and expertise this time around. Her house—hive?—is exactly as it was on Earth, excepting its decidedly darker and more gothic décor. Before too long, she arrives in her bedroom.

Well, what was her bedroom.

Her computer is in the same place where it had been on the very day on which the rabbit hole of Sburb sucked them into something beyond all of their imaginations. Well, perhaps it isn't quite the same laptop—instead of the aging MacBook she once used, it resembles something like a giant clamshell. To add to the heightening sense of the surreal piling up around her, the room around her, supposedly her bedroom, has nothing anything like a bed anywhere in sight. Instead, the only remarkable feature seems to be a large vat with strange ooze inside of it. The word "recuperacoon" springs to mind, the knowledge seeping out from some part of her brain Rose doesn't even know she has. Perhaps she's learned it from the trolls, she thinks, and with a shrug she returns to the laptop, which she wakes from sleep.

A loud clamour of words jumps out at her. "Trollian" features prominently in a far left corner, before Rose does a double take. The words aren't rendered in Latin script, and resemble nothing Rose has ever seen, but nevertheless Rose has no difficulty reading them. She gazes on them curiously, turning her head momentarily and scrutinizing the letters; none of them are familiar to her in the least, and closer inspection renders them illegible. But, sure enough, disengaging from trying to read them actively allows her to understand the words they make up. This immediate availability allows her, after a few moments of adjustment, to begin to read the words on the screen. She is only just beginning to accustom herself to it when she receives a message, several lines cascading into view in just a few seconds.

-- telesticGuise [TG] began trolling thalassicTyrant [TT] --

TG: rose
TG: please tell me this is rose
TG: i swear to god you have to answer
TG: rose come on
TG: is it you im hanging on the edge of my seat here
TG: no fuck that my fingers have released their tenuous grip on the goddamn chair
TG: we tried to negotiate and settle a contract but shit fell through at the last second so i cut all ties with the bastard
TG: now im floating through some blank as hell void that apparently exists below seats and im decidedly not alright with this
TG: uh
TG: yeah

There's little point in asking the question "why?" now, she thinks. There's a vivid clarity to her thoughts in rewind; she's in a place of privileged ground where she can already tell the outcome, and she strikes herself as remarkably dim in retrospect, navigating blind in her negotiations.

The Noble Circle is always recruiting; that much Rose knew from the outset. And by holding that out as a bargaining chip, the wheedling diminished substantially, but so, too, did her control over the situation. All Rose has managed to guarantee for herself and for her friends is life, safety and unity, and in that altered state, when shucking off the husk of death trumped all other priorities, it felt worth it to sign away that blank check. Anything but the cyclical nightmare of Sburb, she pleads, and anything but the emptiness of death.

Serving their aims in another life seemed like little to ask indeed if it restored their lives to what they were.

Now, Rose doesn't know what to think.

She'd known that the concession of serving the aims of the Furthest Ring might have brought some unexpected changes, and she considers herself willing to put up with a great deal for the safety of her friends. Even a mysterious tentacle dick, if such were to be her fate.

Instead, it's this—something completely different and unforeseen. But what more can she do when reassured that Dave is alive than express her gratitude and relief?

TT: Dave.
TT: Oh, you have no idea what a relief it is to know that I'm not alone here.
TT: Are you all right?
TG: i uh
TG: define okay and we can start from there maybe
TT: Well, I'm hoping you're alive.
TG: one for one there things are looking up already
TG: seriously though all i can say is that im hells of confused
TG: rn im sitting in a grody ass glorified bug infested hotroom
TG: jesus im pretty sure its at least ninety in here is there a fan
TG: where are my adoring fans i swear if somebody gave me one of those shitty disney world handheld water sprinkler electric pinwheels i would become homoerotically attracted to it so fucking fast
TT: This seems familiar, in more than one way.
TG: i cant decide which ones worse right now
TG: hang on let me open one of these windows
TG: ok were good
TT: So, I'm going out on a limb and assuming that the troll thing is happening to you right now? Because it's a thing that's happening to me right now.
TG: ok the realness attribute of the troll thing just had a fight with common sense and kinda landed a knockout punch
TG: im pretty dazed and confused right now
TG: i am literally a shitty early nineties coming of age comedy cult classic thats how bad things have gotten lalonde
TG: i might be flipping my shit over here just a little
TG: i mean i can already feel the horns on top of my head
TG: these suckers are heavy as shit
TG: like the text wasnt fucking enough
TG: i played bros shitty elder scrolls games dude but i wasnt expecting to be fluent in upside down backwards daedric after getting hit in the head by jack
TG: speaking of which wtf happened there fighting jack is the last thing i remember before doing a righteous posthumous faceplant
TT: I'm not sure.
TT: I clearly must have made an error in decisionmaking in leading us to Jack.
TT: So I bargained for our lives with the Noble Circle, upon encountering an emissary in the dream bubbles. They promised me that we would be safe, and alive, but nowhere in our contract was some Alternian transformation mentioned.
TG: so we must have wound up as trolls for SOME reason
TG: im guessing it has something to do with the deal you cut with the giant squid things
TG: whatever you did by tickling the horrorterror on its dark sensitive underbelly to try to shoot us out like some orgasmic jet ejection system i cant imagine this is what you had in mind
TT: Honestly, I have no idea.
TT: I get this much; I was trying to reckon with powers far outside of my ability to fathom them. So playing with a limited hand is to be expected. Either way, I didn't think to make explicit "please don't turn us into aliens."
TT: Nevertheless, if They have made good on their promises, we have three advantages at our back: our lives, our safety, and protection from any consequences of the game.
TG: well
TG: ok then
TG: i mean
TG: it sounds like you did what you had to do in order to bring us back
TG: you pretty much said it no more clusterfuck game were alive and safe what is there to be upset over
TG: hell being a troll might not be so bad
TG: i think i see tz and karkat and a bunch of familiar handles here so weve got our troll buddies around
TG: so yknow it might actually be pretty sweet
TG: not like walking into a candyshop sweet more like
TG: harvesting sugar cane in cuba sweet
TG: working those saccharine strands with sickles
TG: karkats sitting there sweating like a douche trying to milk the fucking plant of some more goddamn sugar fibres
TG: man cuba doesnt even exist anymore now does it talk about surreal
TG: but yeah alright were drug mules from troll havana
TG: cant go wrong with that

She's somewhat surprised by his flippant response, given the circumstances. This is Dave, but at the same time he seems almost a little too quick to write off the complications that could arise from being placed on an alien planet, with all its customs, its entirely foreign social graces, its doubtlessly fundamentally different ways of interacting with the world. Something about the whole situation seems wrong, to so easily cast away the humanity they took for granted for thirteen years, so Rose feels more than a little apprehensive about going along with it, offering a certain measure of caution.

TT: That may all be true, but still. I can't help but feel that it was my responsibility, given the mistakes that I made that necessitated it.
TG: it isnt
TG: nobody knew what was going to happen
TG: just the horrorterrors being their typical writhing flagella of utter douchebaggery and rampant asshattery
TG: you cant take the fall for their fuckup
TT: Well...thanks for the vote of confidence, at least.

Rose thinks again of the opportunity she might have to have a real social life, one unshackled from the isolation of Rainbow Falls, one where she can truly meet her three closest friends, and one with several others who had been happy to meet new acquaintances. Suddenly it doesn't sound quite so bad, even if there are complications and confusions about being an alien.

TT: Perhaps you're right, and it's unfair to dismiss the possibilities so quickly.
TT: I recognize Kanaya's and Aradia's handles here, too, so I'm guessing their entire group is here with us.
TG: yeah theyre both here and a couple more i dont recognize but the colors match what i know
TG: oh shit oh my god its tavros
TG: hold up today just got better already im going to make him block me again

A tight shackle of pain in Rose's heart unclenches at this revelation. She would have been ready to apologize to him one thousand times over, to prostrate herself at his feet for their entire reborn lives were it necessary. But in the span of moments a smile, unfamiliar as it may be with those newly sharp teeth lining her gums, comes to her mouth, and all of a sudden it feels like the least important thing in the world. Who cares if we're aliens, she thinks, the refreshing knowledge of her brother's satisfaction enough to make her forget all the specifics, the inconveniences that would invariably arise.

TT: Well, I'm glad that this hasn't proven to be as bad as I initially feared.
TT: And, most of all, that we aren't dead.
TG: so am i
TG: being dead probably wouldve sucked
TG: whatever not important
TG: so unimportant it didnt even make it to troll washington
TG: it got to like troll texas before it gave up and went on a wicked bender in troll louisiana
TG: then it was found dead in troll mississippi
TG: fucking vampires
TT: I hadn't pegged you as a Truebie.
TG: rose im southern
TG: basically the only southern thing im not intimately aware of is outright incest
TG: and hey if we scroll back up the chatlog and think about some of our conversations given what we learned in the hellmurder gameosphere
TG: given the number of hot mom comments i made i think i probably qualify for that too
TG: congratulations you just singlehandedly validated me as a texan
TG: besides i gotta keep my finger on the pulse of popular culture
TG: im nothing if not devoted to keeping my leagues of adoring fans satisfied
TG: man i wonder if troll me has a blog
TT: I shudder to think.

She grins, the sharpened teeth in her mouth prickling against her lips in a still-foreign fashion. It's unsettling on some level, but she tries to leave that aside. Dave's suggestion seems remarkably expedient, but not altogether unwise: setting aside the surreal circumstances and the admittedly strange feeling and sight of the new parts of their bodies, it might not actually turn out to be that bad being a member of an alien species.

The two of them continue conversing and joking, and eventually Rose turns her attention to another conversation, one where she might be able to glean some useful information regarding her current condition. Facing the uncertainties of alienhood, she's comforted by the notion that she has friends not only going through the same thing with her, but other, newer acquaintances who can guide her along, should anything remain unclear. And once again, she confronts the notion that maybe her instinctive reaction of guilt might have been premature.

-- thalassicTyrant [TT] began trolling grimAuxiliatrix [GA] --

TT: Should you have already received any information regarding what will invariably come as the most shocking news since the inception of our acquaintanceship, allow me to confirm any suspicion on your part that my formerly-human contingency and I have now apparently become the celestial equivalent of "roommates" to your kith, and cap off this unfathomably economic delivery of revelation with an adequately appropriate greeting to you:
TT: Hello.
GA: Pardon Me
GA: Rose That Is You Correct
GA: I Cant Say Ive Known Anyone Else Who Uses A Handle With Those Initials Although The Shade Is Darker Than Your Usual More Pale Lavender Choice In
GA: Okay Wait A Second
GA: You Definitely Just Said Formerly Human
TT: Your limitless insight is appreciated as always.
TT: Might you possibly be hiding more startling truths, waiting for the validation of their utterance?
GA: Im Going To Make A Stunning Logical Leap And Guess That You Arent On Earth Right Now
TT: A correct extrapolation! Let's see how far you can take this.
GA: Oh
GA: Stay With Me Here Im Going To Make A Wild Guess
GA: Rose Are You Perhaps On Alternia Right Now
TT: I'm pretty sure I'm on Alternia right now.
GA: Er
GA: Wow
GA: So If I Were To Inquire As To Whether You Might Be In Possession Of Certain Features That Might Be Associated With Residence On This Planet
TT: Ask the question, Kanaya.
GA: Youre A Troll Now Arent You
TT: Three for three. Impressive work, Detective Maryam. I shall have to route my compliments directly to the nearest investigative bureau, whereupon I have no doubts your high-quality sleuthing shall earn you a respectable post.
GA: Um
GA: Wow This Is Pretty Strange
GA: I Cant Say I Was Expecting This Of All Things
GA: Aliens Dont Usually Become Trolls Overnight
TT: Well, I can't say that I was expecting this either, but I suppose that holds true for many of the things that have transpired over the last few days.
TT: But there we have it. Rose Lalonde: newfound troll.
GA: Ok
TT: Yes.
GA: Yes
TT: Yeah.
TT: Now that that's sorted out,
TT: Do you think you'd be willing to provide any useful information a newly initiated subject of the Empire? Because it appears to me that I may just be among its newest citizens.

Rose looks briefly at the pile of papers and the small bag sitting beside her husktop, and from the bag extracts a sylladex, complete with a strife specibus allocated to needlekind, and her familiar tree fetch modus. Within it, she quickly finds a small wallet, within which she notes a card containing her Imperial-issue identification card. Its holographic images shimmer as she turns it over in her fingers, and soon enough Kanaya recaptures Rose's attention by broaching a few potentially relevant topics.

SYMBOLHIGHT: LELDON
HATCH NAME: ROZAYA
HEMOCASTE: VIOLET
LUSUS CLASS: FELID, AQUATIC
IIN: 1637-BIS-199
CULLING STATUS: HEALTHY

GA: Well I Suppose The First Order Of Business Is To Discern Your Blood Colour As Thats A Rather Important And Defining Characteristic Here
GA: At Least It Was On Alternias Prior Incarnation
GA: I See No Reason Why It Would Have Changed In The Interim
TT: It's a shade of dark purple.
TT: I assume it's equivalent to the "hemocaste" marker I'm seeing here on my identification card?
TT: That says 'violet'. I suppose violet is an accurate descriptor.
GA: Oh
GA: Violet You Say
TT: I'm almost certain that's what I said, yes.
GA: Ok Im Just A Little Taken Aback Here
GA: Not In A Bad Way Mind You Just
GA: All Right So Correct Me If Im Wrong But Would You Happen To Be In Possession Of Features That Might Be Distinctly Aquatic In Nature
TT: Are you talking about the gills and the fins?
GA: No Im Talking About The Third Horn On Your Head That Allows You To Sense Human Insincerity Unaided
TT: Damn, it looks like I missed out on that one.
GA: Yes Im Talking About The Gills And Fins
TT: Ok.
TT: Yes, I have gills and fins.
GA: Bear With Me Here Rose
GA: But So That You Know Your Physiology Qualifies You As A Member Of The Ruling Elite On This Planet
GA: In A Word
GA: Royalty
TT: Royalty?
TT: ...Wow.
GA: Yeah Wow Is A Good Way To Put It
GA: To Put It Simply If Genetic Material Were A Game In Which Various Contestants Drew Straws To Determine Their Relative Fortunes
GA: You Got A Long One
TT: I'm thrilled to have a long one. I can only imagine what Dave will have to say on the matter, though.
GA: Oh Yeah I Remember He Was Distinctly Amused By The Notion Of Manufactured Cylindrical Products And Their Respective Distribution
GA: I Think He Was More Interested In Those Created Out Of Ground Grubs
GA: But Very Well I Can Adhere Rose You Have Acquired The Most Fortuitously Endowed Encased Meat Product
GA: Congratulations
TT: This is incredibly silly.
TT: Is there anything else I need to know about this abrupt transformation?
GA: I Suppose The Only Other Salient Question That Remains Is
GA: Do You Have A Lusus
TT: So reads my identification: "Lusus Class: Felid, Aquatic".
TT: So that's a yes, though it does little to elucidate the potential whereabouts of said presumed animal custodian.
GA: Well
GA: Are You Underwater
TT: Not unless my senses of perception have failed me entirely, no.
GA: You Might Want To Look Outside
GA: By The Water Since Im Guessing You Are By The Seaside
TT: I'll do that.
TT: Thanks for the information, Kanaya. I'll send a message should I have another question.

-- thalassicTyrant [TT] ceased trolling grimAuxiliatrix [GA] --

Following Kanaya's advice, Rose slips away from the computer. Glancing around the room somewhat self-consciously, she dons a rumpled sweatshirt she finds on the floor, and draws her Thorns of Oglogoth, before tracing the familiar hallways of her home, black stone of the construction instilling an uncanny claustrophobia in her. Another part of her disregards that sensation, focusing instead on the marvel of her ability to see down the lightless corridors. Still another part, an alien aspect still unintegrated, lurks behind the others, finding some manner of comfort in the cocoon of darkness of her hive, blackened walls a warden against the risks of the outside world. Rose herself cannot decide on a conscious emotion, so she finally settles for a veneer of dispassion, attempting to dissuade the confused rabble within her. Instead, she focuses on the goal at hand, finally reaching the foyer and taking her first steps outside the house, into everything that lies beyond.

The world outside her is all foreboding, jagged rock tinted pink and green from the sullen satellites beginning their slow orbit around the planet, the moons illuminating the translucent blanket of clouds passing in front of them. This is Kanaya's world, the trolls' world, but it's Rose's now, too, and some growing part of her in the back of her mind confirms it. Alternia is the world around her now, and for reasons she cannot explain, she knows it will remain so.

Alternia is nothing like anything she's ever seen. Though no sunlight strikes its surface, the small moons provide all the light Rose needs to see perfectly. She turns her head experimentally, surveying the—western? northern? her inner compass fails her here—terrain to her left; there she sees a river that struck her as familiar to the one from her Rainbow Falls home. Around it, instead of pine trees soaring like pillars into the sky, there are only craggy rocks, the river rapids and waterfalls pouring out over black beaches into a dark, eerie sea.

She knows that river, though she has never seen it before. She remembers the chilly waves lapping against her knees, and the soft, rounded pebbles on its floor, and even, when she strains her thoughts, a happier time, when she would play in it for hours, supervised only by—was it her mother? Her cat leaps to mind, but Rose can't remember the last time a cat served as her lifeguard—well, someone, at least. But what Rose knows most, and knows best, is the familiar, well-worn trail that led to the beautiful, glassy lake of Rainbow Falls Reservoir, the place all her memories took her, eventually. Everything that Rose saw in her mind was eventually reflected there.

Tracing her steps down to the falls, she finally reaches the water. Carefully, she dips her hand in to feel it, and cups a small amount into her hand, as if its strange skylight-purple can be captured in her hands. Along the path, she notices the worn footsteps of sneakers lining the path to the larger body of water, the place where the reservoir once glittered in the sunlight through tall pine trees. Now, a small inlet leads out into a rippling morass of lavender and jade, brief whitecaps slicing the colours apart and obliterating themselves against the steel-grey shoreline.

She approaches hesitantly, and almost as if on command, a hunched-over animal presence lumbers through the billowing breakers and makes a beeline for Rose. For a moment, uncertainty devours her and she backpedals with mild alarm. The realization that the large animal's movement is in no way menacing is enough to anchor Rose to where she is, and she nods with understanding as the big cat emerges.

The tentacles are a little strange, though.

"Felid, aquatic" is what her identification card calls her lusus. Sure enough, the half of the beast that follows the unquestionably catlike front is something like a giant squid. Rose suddenly has several questions about the evolutionary feasibility of a hybrid cat-octopus, but she cannot sustain the incredulity for too long; soon, the tentacle-cat fades into the background of absurdity that seems to be overtaking her life in every aspect. And as she returns to the house with the creature—which squelch-steps in synch with her, occasionally looking up with a mixture of adoring reverence and fierce, unblinking loyalty—in tow, she can't help but wonder if this is truly what is to be the new normal.

At the end of the day, as dawn approaches, she decides that "Zazzerpan" will make a wonderful name for her new animal guardian.

Chapter Text

"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality."
—Mileja Tsyrus, merchantagonist (later executed), from Leadership is an Art

Karkat calls a meeting. A leader, Dave figures, suddenly deprived of a cause for the first time in a long time, will fabricate any reason to maintain some sort of power over the social order, and powerless as he is to try to control the circumstances, he does the only other thing he can do, which is run roughshod over the delicate construct of "human feelings" to express his relief over this turn of events, like he'd be ashamed to admit he ever rubbed elbows with a lesser race. Dave thinks he's going to be sick.

CURRENT carcinoGeneticist [CCG] RIGHT NOW opened memo on board REJOICE, HEATHENS, FOR YOUR LORD HAS SEEN FIT TO GRANT YOU WITH A BOON VALUED BEYOND ALL KNOWABLE CELESTIAL CURRENCIES.

CCG: THAT'S RIGHT.
CCG: IT'S ABOUT TIME SOMEONE AROUND HERE ORGANIZED A PROPER WELCOMING-PARTY-SLASH-SHUT-UP-AND-SWALLOW-SOME-SCHOOLFEED SESSION, NOW THAT IT'S BEEN CLEARLY ESTABLISHED THAT THE FOUR OF YOU WITH WHOM WE WERE UNFORTUNATELY SADDLED HAVE BEEN ELEVATED IN THE EYES OF THE UNIVERSE FROM JUST BELOW POND SCUM TO SOMETHING APPROACHING TOLERABLE.
CCG: SO IF YOU ALL ARE DONE WITH YOUR TEARFUL REUNIONS AND YOUR INANE WEBCAM CONVERSATIONS AND YOUR LAUGHABLY JUVENILE AND PROBABLY PERSONALLY OFFENSIVE BODILY EXPLORATIONS, WE CAN PROPERLY GET DOWN TO BUSINESS AND I CAN TELL YOU ABOUT THE INNUMERABLE FUCKUPS YOU'RE BOUND TO HAVE ALREADY COMMITTED.
CCG: DO WE HAVE ANY BRAVE VOLUNTEERS TO SUBMIT TO THE CLEANSING FLAME OF RE-EDUCATION?
CURRENT grandioseTropaean [CGT] responded to memo.
CGT: oooohh my god, karkat. do you *ever* stop talking?
CCG: HAVE YOU HIT YOUR HEAD AND SOMEHOW FORGOTTEN WHO I AM?
CGT: no! but i still think you are probably making a mountain out of a mole hill here.
CGT: we're kids! that didn't suddenly change just because we had a spooky alien transformation.
CCG: LET'S PRETEND FOR A MOMENT YOU DIDN'T JUST COMPARE YOURSELF TO IMMATURE BLEATBEAST LARVAE, AND MOVE ON TO THE MORE IMPORTANT PART OF THE MESSAGE, WHICH I WAS GOING TO GET TO BEFORE YOU RUDELY INTERRUPTED THE *BEST PART* OF MY INTRODUCTORY FANFARE.
CGT: you asked a question!
CCG: IT WAS A RHETORICAL QUESTION, ONE DESIGNED TO CONVEY THE SHEER INSIGNIFICANCE OF YOUR EX-RACE ON A COSMIC SCALE.
CCG: BUT FINE, QUESTION ASKED, YOU ANSWERED, WE'VE GOTTEN IT OUT OF THE WAY NOW. NOW WE CAN ACTUALLY GET YOU STARTED.
CCG: SO, CONGRATULATIONS! YOU'VE BASICALLY WON THE GENETIC LOTTERY. SOMEHOW YOU STUMBLED ASS-BACKWARDS FROM THE BARGAIN BASEMENT OF SENTIENCE INTO A ONE-WAY TICKET TO BECOMING A SUPERIOR LIFEFORM. THIS IS A CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION, IN CASE YOUR THOUSANDFOLD INCREASE IN GREY MATTER HAS NOT YET BEEN ABLE TO PROCESS ITS ATTACHMENT TO THE UNFORTUNATE RELIC OF THE REMAINS OF YOUR HUMAN THINK PAN.
CCG: FROM HERE ON OUT, YOU CAN LOOK FORWARD TO A LIFE OF EXCITEMENT, ACTION, AND AN INNER LIFE OF THE MIND APPROXIMATELY THIRTEEN BILLION TIMES MORE INTERESTING THAN YOUR PREVIOUS HUMDRUM EXISTENCE.
CURRENT arachnidsGrip [CAG] responded to memo.
CAG: This is shaping up to be a 8anner day for you already, Karkat! I'm going to go pop some gru8corn for this.
CCG: NORMALLY I'D PRETTY MUCH BAN YOU ON THE SPOT FOR SOMETHING LIKE THAT, BUT ACTUALLY THE PROSPECT OF A BUNCH OF SAD SACK FORMER ALIENS TRYING IN VAIN TO COMPREHEND THEIR LIVES AS THEY ARE NOW IS ACTUALLY PRETTY AMUSING TO ME TOO.
CCG: GO FORTH AND POP YOUR GRUBCORN.
CCG: ...WAIT, NO
CCG: DID I JUST EXPRESS SOME KIND OF KINSHIP WITH YOU, VRISKA? DID WE JUST SHARE A "MOMENT"?
CCG: FUCK THIS, NEVER MIND, THIS HAS GONE TOO FAR ALREADY.
CCG banned CAG from responding to memo.
CCG: SO AS I WAS SAYING.
CURRENT telesticGuise [CTG] responded to memo.
CTG: i think im going to start a betting pool slash montage video for shit karkat says hit me up if you want in but do it quick hes pretty quick on the keyboard
CTG: (oh shit the big mans typing what is he going to level with us about now)
CTG: (get in the pool quick hes an odds on favourite to say fuck at least three times)
CGT: i'm not going to bet against that.
CCG: DUDE, NOT COOL. I CAME IN HERE WILLING TO SHARE THE BOUNTY OF TROLLKIND, AND YOU HELD MY MAGNANIMITY UP IN FRONT OF MY FACE AND SET IT ON FIRE.
CCG: IT'S NOT MY FAULT YOUR HATCHING CAME AS ONE OF THE MANY COSMICALLY INSIGNIFICANT SPECIES OF THE UNIVERSE, BUT IF YOU'RE GOING TO ACT LIKE AN OVERGROWN CHILD ABOUT THIS, THEN I DON'T SEE HOW THIS IS GOING TO WORK OUT.
CTG: why you gotta hurt me like this man
CTG: youve embarrassed me in front of all of my friends
CTG: i mean im already going to have to sit out on the street penniless since i bet the last few shreds of my life savings that you were going to cuss me out and you couldnt even deliver on that
CTG: but now im going to have to busk in troll subway stations and make a living off of playing ludicrous accordion compositions for sixteen hours a day thats no way to live
CTG: brb im gonna go get casting calls for troll orphan annie

He jokes to protect himself for how he feels every time he thinks about it too hard. Which is why, Dave supposes, he takes every opportunity he gets not to think about it too hard, instead devoting himself to other pursuits, like mixing with the old-school vinyl that he's pretty sure is made out of some kind of insect. The irony isn't lost on him that in his endeavours into new musical territory involve a great deal of scratching—in fact, that's all it feels like he does sometimes, is rewind, again and again.

It is difficult for Dave, master of time—if but for a brief stint within the confines of a game—that he was, to return to a world where time operates in a linear fashion. In fact, that, if anything, is what unsettles him the most, more than the unwieldy horns on top of his head, or the suspiciously pasty mystery meat and unnerving oil-slick coffee lining his refrigerator, or the fact that an enormous crow whose personality is a dead ringer for his older brother's is supposed to be his guardian. A week into this brave new world he's been thrust into without much choice in the matter, he's finding it's the little things that are getting to him the most. He's five minutes late and the convenience store is already closed. He stays out too late, until the sun's first rays threaten to peek over the horizon, and gets a nasty, peeling sunburn. He spends hours debating whether to brave actually getting into the recuperacoon and then realizes he's run out of time to actually sleep.

Time won't rewind for him again, not anymore. It grates on him, snags on him at every opportunity. The instinct was ingrained in him so deeply when he still held dominion over the aspect that he's constantly reminded of it by what he can't do. His perfect timekeeping lapses without that steady rhythm reinforcing every beat within his mind: hours feel like minutes, seconds feel like days, and his first week on Alternia is the fastest eternity he's ever lived through.

For a few minutes at a time, though, when Dave is simply trying to relax, trying not to think about the oppressively obvious, he can almost feel like he's back home, in his cramped Houston apartment. Outside his hivesuite, the sounds of the city continue well into the scorching morning, and he cannot help but think of the hot summer nights in Houston, when he would open the window to the apartment, sit with his brother, and just behold humanity.

But his brother isn't there anymore, replaced with, as he learns in rather alarming fashion, a giant white crow that swoops down from the skies and returns to its nest on the highest point of the hivestem. It seems to like him, at the very least, and has a sense of strangely fraternal loyalty. And like his brother, it spars with him, assuming a martial position at one end of the roof and issuing taunting cries until Dave draws his sword. And that's something he can hold onto, even if Dirk can't be there to stand beside him.

That's when the permanence of his involuntary Alternian vacation begins to set in, once he's endured a few dozen unsolicited messages from Karkat about how relieved he is that he won't have to put up with the humans' "crapsack ex-culture" anymore, followed by a few more expressing his thankfulness that he won't have to be mortally embarrassed to call them friends anymore, and finally a few final addenda where he half-apologizes for celebrating the extinction of humanity a little too quickly.

CG: I GUESS I COULD HAVE WAITED LONGER BEFORE REJOICING YOUR BONUS-ROUND TRANSFORMATION INTO NORMAL, CIVILIZED PEOPLE.
CG: THE "BOOYAH" WAS PROBABLY A LITTLE EXCESSIVE, TOO.
CG: SO, UH, SORRY FOR RUBBING THAT ONE IN.

That's as good as apologies get around Karkat. It's sort of endearing, in the sad sort of way that makes him want to laugh anyway. It's certainly something, which is more than can be said of John's and Jade's overeager, overexcited messages about their exploits and their adventures, of which they have apparently each had more than two in the last week, giving way to breathless endorsements of their new lives on Alternia. Terezi has a hard time containing her excitement, too; her enthusiasm somewhat steamrolls any consideration she might have had for the fact that Dave might be reeling, just a little bit, from losing not only his entire civilization but his humanity to boot.

GC: DO NOT WORRY D4V3
GC: 1 W1LL B3 D3L1GHT3D TO SCHOOLF33D YOU 1N TH3 H1PP1TY OF TH3 K1DS
GC: (TH4T 1S WH4T THOS3 OF US "1N TH3 LOOP" C4LL TH3 CULTUR4L H3Y-O JUST SO YOU KNOW)
GC: L1K3 YOU 4R3 4 D3M4ND1NG B4BY CH1RPB34ST 4ND 1 4M TH3 ON3 WHO DOL3S OUT PR1Z3 M34LWORMS
GC: BUT 1 4M V3RY G3N3ROUS!
GC: 4ND 1 W1LL 3NSUR3 TH4T YOU R3C31V3 ONLY TH3 JU1C13ST 4ND MOST D3L3CT4BL3 P1NK W1GGL3B34STS >:]

Dave can't will himself to answer an "encouragement" like that one with unabashed gratefulness, much though he understands the spirit in which it's meant. Of course, Terezi having all the social grace of a drunken ballerina doesn't help the matter, either. She doesn't—can't—understand that it isn't just what's practised, what's learned that will stop making him feel constantly on edge, but also what's forgotten. He's a mess of learned responses that have no meaning here and he can't make sense of any of the actions his body takes and the reactions it has without him. Dave is almost an observer to himself, unable to pull together a cohesive self to present to the world when he can't even figure out what the insistent rumbling in the back of his throat is for. And though Rose, John, and Jade do the best they can to support each other and share the most useful information they've learned in the last week from their patchwork sources, it's Karkat who answers Dave and patiently goes through all manner of cultural norms and mores, instructing him on the most basic customs and tenets of Alternian society.

CG: NO IT'S REALLY MORE OF A LINE YOU DON'T CROSS.
CG: NOT AS RUST, ANYWAY.
TG: hold up hang on jesus everyone and their goddamn grandma has been talking about rust this rust that
TG: no wait shit you dont even have grandmas fine whatever that alien space mom that lays all your eggs but through some sick time paradox i basically just pulled out of my ass all of you have one who occasionally says racist shit
TG: and she keeps going on about how everything was better before they let black people into the parks
TG: could you just like stop for one moment and actually explain what the hell rust even means
CG: RUST. LIKE, THE BLOOD COLOUR. THAT'S YOU, DAVE, YOU AND ARADIA ARE THE PROUD STANDARD-BEARERS OF THE MAROON HUE. IT'S LIKE THE UNIVERSE'S COSMIC "FUCK YOU" TO YOUR CONTINUED DAILY EXISTENCE, DISTILLED AND INJECTED INTO YOUR BLOODSTREAM SO IT CAN BE FUCKING INESCAPABLE. CONGRATULATIONS, BULGELORD, YOU JUST EARNED A ONE-WAY TICKET TO THE VERY BOTTOM OF ALTERNIA'S FOOD CHAIN.
TG: so im guessing i cant like
TG: clean up the rust a little bit take a scrubby pad to my veins
TG: chug some clr maybe
CG: STOP IT, DAVE. YOU'RE EMBARRASSING YOURSELF, YOU'RE EMBARRASSING ME, YOU'RE RETROACTIVELY EMBARRASSING ANYONE WHO HAS EVER SHARED YOUR BLOOD COLOUR.
CG: THE POOR ASSHOLES ARE RISING FROM THEIR SHALLOW, IGNOMINIOUS GRAVES AND REGAINING CONSCIOUSNESS JUST SO THEY CAN BE SO OVERWHELMED WITH EMBARRASSMENT BY PROXY THAT THEY CULL THEMSELVES FROM SHAME ALL OVER AGAIN.
CG: THIS IS YOUR LEGACY.
TG: ok ok i get it everyone is troll racist against me
TG: tell me karkat whats the good news
CG: THE GOOD NEWS IS YOU STILL WIN OUT OVER ME.
CG: HA HA, LET'S ALL SHARE A LAUGH OVER THE SINGULAR SOLACE YOU HAVE THAT WARDS YOU AGAINST BEING THE VERY LOWEST OF THE LOW, BECAUSE FUCKING SURPRISE, THE UNIVERSE CONSPIRES TO DENY ME EVEN THE ONE LUXURY OF EXISTING AT ALL ON THE SOCIAL TOTEM POLE.
CG: BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME, LET'S GO BACK TO TRYING, IN VAIN, TO REMEDY YOUR COMICALLY AND WOEFULLY INADEQUATE UNDERSTANDING OF SOCIAL CUSTOMS AND BASIC KNOWLEDGE ON HOW NOT TO PERFORM THE EQUIVALENT OF PIROUETTING ACROBATICALLY AND ENTHUSIASTICALLY ONTO THE NEAREST CULLING FORK BULGE FIRST, YOU HAVE NO IDEA, THERE IS *NOTHING* I WOULD RATHER DO WITH MY PRECIOUS TIME.
 

Dave likes Karkat from the get-go. Karkat feigns a façade of unending, weary, resigned rage, and it's not too dissimilar from the practised patina of insincerity that Dave holds up as his shield. And that's something two Knights see in each other without much trouble, that they're just holding up shields to the danger in the world. They understand each other on this profound, visceral level, and when Dave turns in halfway through the night because he simply can't stomach hearing one more lesson on inane and overcomplicated troll terminology, Karkat is there to berate him. It's good-natured, though, and Dave can appreciate that too, that behind his shield Karkat is right there with him; he didn't sign up for any of this either, after all. And a troll, like any other, can get tired of the bullshit.

And even if it's not a very familiar kind of relationship, this weird half-baked anti-friendship based on mutually making fun of each other for their freakish faults, followed by a grudging ritualistic, pseudo-apologetic dance where the word "feelings" remains unuttered and entirely anathema to their very beings—well, it's not bad, either. It's nothing really resembling human camaraderie: even the most vitriolic, sardonic, barbed exchanges between Dave and Rose really can't compare to the best and most unguarded moments between him and Karkat, but he learns to appreciate it. It gives him an outlet and a source of information that isn't the regurgitated, clinical exposition that Lalonde sends him on an upsettingly frequent basis (can't he just have a fucking conversation with her, these days?) or the casually tone-deaf editorials of Terezi, who more than occasionally indulges in some strange roleplay that humanity never existed in the first place, and that Dave is making up the entire charade as some elaborate experiment in earnest, post-ironic performance art.

In short, without Karkat there to call him an idiot and share choice BitTrollent links, he'd be up the creek without a paddle, and now he at least has a shitty, beaten-up, second-hand oar to be able to manage the nasty-looking rapids staring him down on this planet. It does something to help stave off the boredom, too; Dave spends a lot of time wondering what trolls even do in their free time, without adults looking over their shoulder or sending them to school or really enforcing much of anything in the way of a social structure. And after his first few weeks on Alternia, his general impression is that this is kind of like an upside-down and backwards remixed Lord of the Flies, but instead of everyone getting together and engaging in acts of barbarism on the unlucky fat kid, most trolls seem content to live out their adolescences as solitary, psychotic hermits hell-bent on destroying each other one at a time, ignoring everyone else until their clock runs out.

It doesn't take Dave too long to notice that he's falling mostly into the same pattern, at least if he discounts the whole part about feeling erotically compelled to stick his bulge into some annoying asshole for the sake of completing some twisted fucking rite of passage (also, some fucking rite of passage). He doesn't really want to think about that part.

But it's enough to put a certain amount of strain on his relationships, when all of a sudden interactions that had once been as smooth as butter to maintain friendly and frequent start to feel strained and confrontational without significant effort on his part. His laid-back, amicable conversations with his (formerly) human friends are just memories now, and he struggles to resurrect the ghost of how they once were in the shadow of this strange, subliminal antipathy that seemed to permeate even their best attempts at rekindling the close kinship they held mere weeks ago.

John is the worst.

He's thrilled by the whole turn of events. Fine, Dave thinks, the asshole was always the kind of person willing and eager to look at the bright side of anything that happened, and that was good for him. He thinks being a space alien is the coolest shit that's ever happened in his entire life? More power to him. But that's not what really bothers Dave. He can't tell what it is, but something in John's personality just feels slightly off, just different enough to feel like a splinter in the back of his mind.

GT: dude, my house is a fortress.
GT: there's my whole house, and then under there's this totally badass castle just carved into a cliff! with caves and walls and everything.
GT: basically, you should pretty much stand in awe because my house is now officially the coolest house.
TG: man didnt anybody tell you thats troll racist
TG: you cant just go showing off your bling when there are people getting routinely fucked by the business end of paradox space
TG: im holed up in this top floor apartment with no elevator that is somehow shittier and tinier than the one i had in houston and judging from what i know about trolls chances are im literally living in some giant fucking bug or something
TG: im 80% sure my neighbour has some kind of gastrointestinal disorder and the other 20% chance is that hes been slowly rotting since the day i got here
TG: so lay off on the fucking fortune 500 braggadocio dont really need to hear about how im at the bottom of the shit heap
TG: have some fucking tact dude
GT: haha, fuck you.
GT: you're just jealous of my awesome castle. and i'm going to talk about it as much as i want.
GT: so if you're done being a huge idiot, i'm going to tell you about my FOUR game rooms!
TG: wtf

It's weird, it's wrong, it's not really anything John would ever say, but it's delivered with such trademark Egbert obstinacy and attitude that it couldn't be anyone else.

Dave shudders. When he talks to John, it's like that. Like someone's taken John and replaced him with this not-quite-false replica, too close for comfort but with every unfamiliar detail sticking out like cactus spines in all directions. It scares him, because it makes him wonder if he isn't the same way too, if he isn't Bizarro World Dave to all of his friends, and maybe that's why they're acting more standoffish, less gregarious, and less like friends to him. It would make sense, he realizes, and from the little he knows of trolls and their dangerous culture, he starts to wonder if that's what's happening, that all of them are crazy now, that that's just the way things have to be now that they're aliens.

But then he remembers Rose and Jade.

Rose seems to be doing her best to control the weird troll impulses, the anger, the emotional imbalances; he can tell that sometimes, she just has this pent-up fury she's unwilling to release. And she doesn't, because she remembers her humanity. Dave admires that, and he resolves to do the same. If he doesn't let himself be controlled by that part of his brain he really can't understand, the part that tells him to punch the walls until his knuckles are bleeding to the bone, until the anger pulsing in a section of his mind he doesn't think he's ever had before spills over and permeates everything, then he can keep hits sanity, in some way.

Jade, though, reminds him of humanity not through a transparent struggle to maintain it, but by the overwhelming tide of positive emotion that seems to fill every space she inhabits. Dave can tell that she's happy despite all the upheaval; of each of the four of them, Jade's daily routine and habits certainly have changed the least. Jade has already lived alone, guarded by only a strange animal companion; further, her isolation from the rest of humankind has cultivated a rare breed of self-sufficiency, one even Rose Lalonde, self-proclaimed pragmatist, cannot hope to match.

TG: so do you know what aradia told me the other day
TG: she said that because im on the bottom of the shit heap in this society chances are im rocking psychic type powers
TG: who know that was all you needed to get a leg up man i would totally have kicked my own ass out onto the street in order to get telekinesis
TG: no takeout pizza that would suck but who cares now im going to be like goddamn marty mcfly except the world is my fucking hoverboard
TG: watch out jaws 20 im going to pull an uncannybrutal manual off your tail and get all the air i could ever possibly want
TG: im going to have so much air theres probably going to be some troll government agency that gets notified because im taking all of the air out of the atmosphere and using it to fuel my kickass stuntman habits
TG: im sorry sir but the ministry of enviromurder has discovered that youve been using up more than your fair share
TG: because of the absolutely unreal amount of air youve caught the alternian empire has no choice but to officially classify you as a class b weather balloon
TG: thats me
TG: cosmic weather balloon
TG: cant catch me now im on fire
GG: cant catch you now huh???
GG: im sorry dave but that sounds suspiciously like......
GG: .........
GG: A CHALLENGE!!!!
TG: uh oh what have i done have i unleashed the beast
GG: all im saying is that i have a science lab
GG: just because you have psychic powers, dont think youre going to be the only one in the skies >:)

And that's Jade, undaunted, unafraid, and entirely unfazed by the change in the world around her. He's not sure whether to be relieved or terrified when he finds out, through Karkat, that she has already begun to rack up her own body count. Any concern, of course, that she might struggle with the forbidding environment is assuaged, but that doesn't mean he isn't more than a little unsettled by the idea of her killing for her own survival. He can understand it on an intellectual level—sure, he's heard the stories from Karkat, too—but it seems ludicrous and beyond his imagining that kids his age are stomping around trying to predate on one another.

What Karkat doesn't mention is the drones.

The first time it happens, it catches everyone by surprise.

Seven weeks into their new lives on Alternia, things aren't looking so bad. Of course, there are complications: the completely reasonable qualms about their new bodies, the changes in self-image, in eating habits, in sleep needs, in psychological states, in emotional control, and in the newfound art of socializing as a troll. Each, by part, serves to make their first steps as Alternians something of a jumble. But Dave has fallen in easily with Terezi, Karkat, Aradia, and Jade, and Rose, through some initial pangs of guilt, joins in, bringing Kanaya with her into this neonatal social circle, and all in all it becomes easy for them to forget, at least at times, how much upheaval has just occurred. Rose can only see a single facet of that equation, though. Dave, meanwhile, is schooled rigorously by fellow lowbloods on the art of mingling in the crowd, on blending in, on drawing attention away from oneself, and—most importantly—the delicate craft of not getting killed. To say that he actively rejects the advice would be uncharitable; he certainly listens, nods in the right places, and learns intellectually how one stays safe in a society that hates those who do not ‘respect their place’ on the rigidly stratified social echelons put in place eons ago by the same ruler who now holds the throne.

But Dave, Earth-human-teenager that he is, having never experienced the wrath of a hemoist society at its worst, cannot so quickly learn that the practised cocky comportment ingrained in him by the Strider ethic is anathema on this planet. So when he takes his first transport shuttle to Rose’s hive, head cocked just a little too high, his adolescent horns standing tall and outsized against him, the guard drone at the door decides to show this snot-nosed little punk a lesson. Dave’s taken off-guard, but he’s proficient with a sword, a martial art exercised first under the skylight of Houston now keeping him alive on Alternia. Within a few moments, he's drawn the blade and is thrusting it skyward to meet the drone's first strike. He deflects the blow from the drone, dashing out with a youth roll, eyes bewildered from the shock and, to be quite honest, a little terrified by the easily nine-foot-tall drone bearing down on him with alarming speed.

He’s a good distance away from the transport by now, and running towards his original destination, the seaside acropolis where Rose resides. But the drone is out for blood now, and does not appear to want to rest until he’s apprehended and dismembered the little shit that disrespected him.

It’s as this point that Rose, observing from her window, takes note of the dark figure looming over her lawnring, and sees Dave on the run from the insectoid monster. And in that moment, Rose’s eyes are violet fire, her hands snapping out with needles drawn from her sylladex, the tips glowing blistering white, and within ten seconds Rose is there, in the heat of the battle, firing a wicked lance of concentrated light at the drone, halting its forward progress, and preventing it from landing an otherwise crippling blow to her brother.

In another ten seconds, Rose cuts her distance to the great carapaced thing in half, and then in quarters, and with a speed and ferocity even Rose herself does not know she has in her she rams her horns into the tender junction of the drone’s thorax to the very hilt, the long sunburst spires drawing out hellion incarnate, a sickening sludge of black blood erupting from the middle of its torso.

In another ten seconds, the drone is bleeding out. Rose unsheathes her horns from the deep wounds, one hand pushing back her matted hair and pulling away a clump of black coagulate. Her eyes snap automatically to Dave, nursing a relatively deep cut on his arm. It poses no grave danger, she surmises, but it would certainly leave a scar to remember.

In another ten seconds, Rose is by his side, Thorns stowed once again, hand around his shoulder, speechless but speaking volumes. They sit there for a good ten minutes, shaking against each other in their embrace, and from that comfort rises a horrific dread in their stomachs at what the future would bring.

That feeling, she knows, will never leave them.

Chapter Text

"So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."

—Kankri Vantas, the Suffering Signless (later executed), quoted in The Testament, or the Gospel of Meulin, the Disciple.

-- apocalypseArisen [AA] began trolling telesticGuise [TG] --

AA: you had visions
AA: didnt you

Dave wakes up with something that he assumes must be what a hangover feels like, combined with a migraine slowly, almost delicately, drilling itself into him behind his eye. He thrusts out his hand, as if to drag himself out of the recuperacoon, before realizing that he's already curled up on the floor.

A pall of embarrassment drapes him, and it takes him a minute to summon up the energy to lift himself from the ground. When he finally does, it is stiffly and with a weary, resigned purpose. It's times like these, Dave thinks, that he wishes the rambunctious crow ostensibly charged with his safekeeping would be more like his brother, stern and occasionally overbearing, and less like the feathery asshole that he is. The oversized bird makes its appearance for another swordfight, every equinox or so, but it's nothing what he shared with Dirk.

There is a familiar buzzing in his pocket, and somehow he knows who it is without even needing to check. He unlocks the device, and his suspicions are confirmed. A ping from Trollian lets him know helpfully that Aradia is on the other end of the line.

TG: uh
TG: hey aradia
TG: ok hang on can we back this up just a few steps right now i feel like it would be a good idea to lay down some ground rules
TG: not that i dont think youre a cool chick and all but i feel like thats taking viewport privileges a little further than they oughta go
TG: could we like
TG: maybe notify the producer lead actor and creative mastermind before deciding to have a limited run release of strider 3 revenge of the psychic migraines on your computer screen
TG: it might be nice to get a "hi" or something thrown in there too but maybe thats just me getting greedy about my greetings
TG: you know that happened with lalonde and me the other day and she was like "oh by all means lets dispense with the pleasantries" can you believe it she called them fucking pleasantries
AA: dave
TG: what is that even
TG: probably some highblood shit thats her jam these days
TG: who cares those pleasantries are taking the first ship off this shitheap onto planet trashcan
TG: theyre getting shuttled out of her so fast that pretty soon the planet will collapse on its own gravity and become a trashcan black hole
AA: dave
TG: they cant even be contained by these spatial boundaries
TG: the pleasantries pile doesnt stop from growing taller
AA: dave stop
TG: oh
TG: shit sorry that one got away from me a little back there
AA: thats ok i probably should have been a bit more forthright about all of this!
AA: ive had a ghost keep tabs on you for the last equinox or so i had a premonition that your latent psychic abilities were going to manifest
AA: im glad i wasnt wrong on that count!
AA: but im not wrong about what kind of ability it is either am i
AA: they were visions
TG: ok food for thought aradia do you want to maybe ask me if im alright or offer some sentimental advice before jumping into the deep shit like youre donkey kong going after my bananas
AA: sorry!
AA: this just feels really important in a way that i cant verbalize quite yet
AA: are you ok dave
TG: yeah mostly other than feeling like an ice pick got intimate with my grey matter but what else is new
TG: whats the deal why is this so important
TG: or more important than anything else around
TG: are you tailing jade to see if her mad science is up to prophecy standards or something like give me the upshot
AA: hmm
AA: do you remember when i told you i couldnt really understand the bond you felt for your adult human guardian
TG: uh
TG: yeah sure
AA: not everyone shares that view actually
AA: there are those that believe that every troll has a direct genetic forebear that one can look up to as a role model
AA: and if one so chooses to adopt their mantle and fulfill their destinies by walking down the same path they once trod
TG: so ancestors basically
AA: exactly
TG: you dont sound convinced
TG: where are you going with this
AA: well
AA: i never was convinced!
AA: the bluebloods and the seadwellers were always the ones who believed most because they wanted the famous generals and soldiers of the past to be their ancestors
AA: their history doesnt typically remember the bravery of a rustblood
AA: but lately when i hear the voices of the departed they tell me to look to the past
AA: to those who blazed the trail before us and to those who will one day come after
TG: okay so
TG: ancestors are real is that what signs are pointing to
TG: damn it i hate this fucking cryptic bullshit let me have another shake at the eight ball
AA: i dont see what else they could be trying to tell me about
AA: the harder part is finding out who they are
AA: and then maybe well know what we were placed here to complete
TG: that doesnt sound ominous at all

Which seems to be the anthem of the day for Dave. Six equinoxes on this planet have taught him that just about everything suspicious and ominous leads to trouble somewhere down the line; and lately, more and more crops up that doesn't fit the pattern even of what his friends—and his friends are already all crazy to begin with, and he is too, like everything else that's normal in this Mad-Max-Hunger-Games universe—consider to be typical of Alternia. Aradia's dark prophecies have only grown more formless and all-encompassing since Sburb's conclusion, so there's some sick relief in having a kernel of concrete information, even if knowing it only leads to more questions and unknown quantities.

Being a psychic isn't anything like how Dave expected it. When Aradia had first broached the topic, he envisioned the trappings of a seer, of some false prophetess decked out in paisley and wooden heels and headscarves, channeling crystal balls and coming up with vague warnings about eating seafood next week and meeting an old friend (or maybe a family member, hedging bets for the sake of making it even more vague) who would say something unbelievable. For at least three weeks, Dave sends panicked messages to Rose, afraid he's going to grow a wart on his nose.

But that's not what it's like, not at all. His visions are not conjured but like nagging memories struggling to unearth themselves from his subconscious, slowly developing into a maddening drone marching through the back of his mind. They're there when he wakes up (in a vat of alien slime), when he brushes his (too sharp, too large) teeth, when he eats his (questionably edible) breakfast, when he rubs the sleep from his eyes and heads out into the night-time under the brilliant sheen of the (still unfamiliar) moons looming above, and when he returns every morning with the dawn, unsure whether he should feel grateful that he's still alive. Most of the time they're just passing, fleeting sensory distortions that he can barely register. Of a single wing behind him, of a wound bleeding vivid blinding (human) red from his stomach, of a black and viscous monster of blood and tar hiding in the corners of his vision and lying in wait to strike him down. But rarely, these flashes of sight are something else entirely.

He can feel it coming on. There's a certain feeling, a lance of electricity that rattles down his spine so powerfully he finds it hard to stand, and his mind's eye feels occluded from all angles. Even his eyes seem to disobey the simplest commands, and they roll to the back of his skull while something deeper and more primal overtakes him. His body shuts down, muscles going limp, ears filling with static and noise, and an arresting image dominates his existence: there's a dark figure lit only by the vivid incandescence of a pair of metal shackles holding his hands against a stake. There's something eerie that he can't quite place as he feels himself transfixed on the strange cuffs, but his sight fades too soon for him to place what it is.

When he comes to, a single symbol is seared into him so profoundly he doesn't think he will ever forget it; it's fitting, he thinks as he regains control of his senses, that his psychic visions would make their defining characteristic a euphemism for oral sex.

AA: you were going to tell me about the visions dave
TG: okay can we get a time out here
TG: i need some reassurance that when i tell you that you arent going to think im an asshole whos just pulling your leg
TG: scratch that we all already know im kind of an asshole but there is absolutely no leg pulling its like
TG: what the hell would the opposite of leg pulling even be
TG: im pushing your leg so far in the opposite direction. theres a rocket ship boarding right now and your leg has a ticket to outer space all aboard
TG: this is really dumb
AA: thats ok dave dont worry im not going to judge you for what you saw that would be kind of silly!
AA: now are you going to tell me
TG: it was literally just this
TG: symbol i guess it was the numbers 6 and 9 next to each other
TG: i think for a moment i saw some dude strung up in 69 handcuffs and somehow it wasnt sexual i swear to god it just seemed like he was pissed off
TG: i guess that could be a turn on for some people but i get the feeling someone was killing him

It doesn't take the two of them long to piece together the information that they do have. What Aradia recognizes immediately as Karkat's symbol suddenly acquires another layer of significance; it undergoes a transformation in her mind from simply a recognizable ersatz for him to a potential epicentre of prophecy, one even she doesn't know the extent of yet. But she puts two and two together quickly, and instantly she knows that her predictions have been confirmed: this man in Dave's dreams was the genetic forebear of Karkat, and the first confirmation that in making it another day alive on this world, they're fighting for something beyond their own lives.

It doesn't take long for Dave to decide that he should bring this to the one who might have the greatest vested interest in the matter. He breaks the news in the most tactful way he can think; unfortunately, tact is hardly Dave's strong suit. Karkat will have none of it.

CG: OH NO, YOU DON'T.
CG: I HAVE HEARD ONE TOO MANY MYSTICS WHISTLING SWEET FUCKING DIXIE OUT THEIR ASSHOLES TO FALL FOR THIS KIND OF BAIT-AND-SWITCH AGAIN.
CG: YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER DAVE, I'VE BEEN SADDLED WITH THESE SORRY SHIT-FOR-BRAINS SINCE BEFORE THEY COULD TELL THEIR BONE BULGE FROM THEIR PHLEGM LOBE.
TG: wait what in christs almighty loincloth is a phlegm lobe
TG: give me some context here
TG: is it above or below the cartilaginous mucus nozzle
TG: no hang on i got this its inside the basilar sponge tube
CG: SHUT UP, THAT'S NOT IMPORTANT.
CG: WHAT'S IMPORTANT HERE IS SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT AND I'M NOT GOING TO STOP HARANGUING YOU UNTIL IT PIERCES THROUGH THE DENSE PALISADE OF YOUR IGNORANT PANCAGE AND PROLIFERATES THROUGH EVERY FIBRE OF YOUR GODFORSAKEN BEING.
CG: WHEN THE FURTHEST-REACHING CAPILLARIES HALFWAY UP YOUR WASTE CHUTE FINALLY GET IT INTO THEIR SYSTEM THAT WE'RE NOT GOING TO TURN THIS INTO AN IMPERIAL FUCKING ISSUE, THEN MAYBE WE CAN HAVE A CONVERSATION ABOUT ME SCALING BACK THIS FULL-FLEDGED ASSAULT TO A MERE HOURLY SESSION ONCE A DAY.
CG: SO WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, LET ME GET BACK TO THE POINT I'M MAKING. WHICH IS THIS.
CG: DO YOU THINK I HAVEN'T HEARD THIS SAME THING BEFORE??? I'VE GROWN UP WITH ARADIA AND SOLLUX SPOUTING OFF SOMETHING NEW ABOUT HOW THE WORLD IS GOING TO END EVERY OTHER BILUNAR PERIGEE, YOU LEARN TO TUNE IT OUT AFTER A WHILE.
CG: GETTING YOURSELF SUCKED INTO THEIR ASS-BACKWARDS CULT DOES YOU NO FAVOURS, IT DOES ME NO FAVOURS, AND ALL IT *DOES* DO IS GENERALLY MAKE YOU A CONSTANT BACKACHE TO BE AROUND FOR BASICALLY EVERYONE AROUND YOU.
CG: IS THAT WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR HERE?
CG: BE REASONABLE, MAN. SHE CAN FEED YOU ALL THE SHIT SHE WANTS ABOUT ANCESTORS BUT THAT'S JUST MADE-UP HIGHBLOOD FEEL-GOOD MOTHERFUCKERY.
TG: okay so you know id normally be on your side in all of this given that the whole ancestor deal sounds stupid as shit to begin with and has pretty much only served to make my life an absolute shithole for the last week or so
TG: like you dont know the depths of the shithole we are talking here ive found myself entrenched in some seriously grody asscaverns and the only way out is through some pretty ugly terrain
TG: we are going to have to trudge through the trenches elbow-to-elbow with primo butt gold in order to break through the front lines of the supreme assflank
TG: but i feel like its my responsibility to point out to you here as your responsible bro that the whole world ending thing that aradia and sollux were telling you about actually happened
TG: what do you know it turns out thats the reason im here today telling you some bs about the asshole alien past instead of idk doing unreal parkour on the streets of houston
CG: HEY, DON'T PIN THAT ONE ON ME.
CG: YOU AND I BOTH KNOW WHO FUCKED UP, OKAY? IT'S NOT ON YOU EITHER, SO DON'T MAKE ME OUT TO BE THE VILLAIN.
TG: no ones making anyone out to be a villain about anything swear to god if anything its like the total opposite
TG: shes been right about a lot of weird shit before so if her spidey sense is striking true on this shes saying
TG: this dude who looked exactly like you is your troll great-grandpappy
TG: bulkier but we all know youll never buff up if you dont stop using your chair like a crutch
CG: IS THERE A POINT THAT YOU'RE TRYING TO MAKE OR ARE YOU JUST HERE TO RAMBLE AIMLESSLY UNTIL I AM LEFT EXSANGUINATED OF HOPE THAT YOU WILL EVER SHUT UP?
TG: shit no karkat
TG: sit tight theres like a whole goddamn kiloton of infobomb im about to drop on your uneducated ass
TG: there is so much data inside that theyre going to have to found a school between your cheeks
TG: vantass university dedicated to learning about strider prophecies ever since then
CG: DAVE, IF YOU VALUE THE BODILY INTEGRITY OF YOUR SQUAWK BLISTER, YOU WILL GET TO THE POINT BEFORE I KNOT YOUR TONGUE TO YOUR WASTE CHUTE.
TG: the point
TG: uh yeah
TG: the point is that it looks like your ancestor was important enough to get his ass chained to a stick in front of everyone else
TG: and get his hands cuffed with fucking BURNING CHAINS made in exactly your symbol
TG: really gave me a headtrip honestly
TG: but if shes right that weve gotta take cues from our ancestors
TG: well karkat mark ii youve got your lifes purpose cut out for you
TG: go find some dude with freaky caste chains and lube up
TG: its time for the grillmaster to shine
CG: DID YOU HAVE TO GO THERE?
TG: admit it
TG: youd have been disappointed in me if i hadnt
CG: HMM, LET ME THINK ABOUT THIS ONE FOR A SECOND
CG: NO, YOU SPONGECLOGGED NOOKPOLISHER, I WOULD HAVE BEEN JUST FINE WITHOUT YOU TOSSING OUT GRATUITOUS AND GRUESOME REFERENCES TO SEARING METAL LIMB-CLAMPS.
TG: yeah but youre a better man now that i did
CG: MY INNER SELF LOATHING NOW ENDEAVOURS TO OVERWHELM ALL SENSE OF PROPRIETY AND ASK YOU HOW SO, EVEN THOUGH
TG: well if youre asking
CG: EVEN THOUGH!!!! I KNOW ENTIRELY BETTER.
 
-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] has blocked telesticGuise [TG] --
 

Dave doesn't even have the time to relish his victory when he gets another message, seemingly typed out with such furious speed he can barely register its contents until Karkat has earned his final word, again.

-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling telesticGuise [TG] --

CG: HERE'S AN IDEA
TG: didnt you just block me
CG: YOOOOUUUU SHUT THE FUCK UP.
CG: HERE'S AN IDEA. NEXT TIME YOU THINK TO YOURSELF, RUNNING THOSE SLUGGISH PROCESSES YOU CALL THOUGHTS AROUND THE ASSORTMENT OF MEALY, MORIBUND HEARTWORMS YOU CALL A SPONGE SLOWLY ROTTING INSIDE THE LIQUEFYING SWILL OF LYE AND BILGEWASTE REGRETTABLY ENCASED WITHIN THE SORRY CONFINES OF YOUR PANCAGE, "HEY, MAYBE I SHOULD JOKE ABOUT KARKAT VER. 1.0 BEING *CHAINED TO A FUCKING POST* WITH HIS OWN SCORCHING HOT METAL SYMBOL SINGING HIS WRISTS", ALSO CONSIDER THIS. DO FUCKING NOT.
TG: is this blackflirting
 
-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] has blocked telesticGuise [TG] --

It's several hours before Karkat finally musters up the courage to slink back and half-apologize to Dave, but Dave is fine with that. In his mind, he's already won, and he wears a stupid smirk on his face for the remainder of the day.

 
CG: UUUUGGGHHHH.
CG: LISTEN, OUT OF A MUTUAL, ALBEIT GRUDGING, SENSE OF RESPECT FOR YOU, I'M GOING TO LET THIS ONE SLIDE.
CG: ARADIA LOOKS NICE, BUT SHE CAN BE A PRETTY POWERFUL MANIPULATOR WHEN SHE WANTS TO BE. NOW FOR SOME REASON SHE THINKS IT'S A BRIGHT IDEA TO SET YOU ON THE WARPATH ABOUT THE IDEA THAT ANCESTORS ARE ACTUALLY REAL, INSTEAD OF FAKE WIGGLERBAIT THAT'S PROBABLY A GREAT WAY TO GET YOU KILLED BY A BLUEBLOOD WITH AN ANGER MANAGEMENT PROBLEM. (NEVER MIND, THAT'S REDUNDANT.)
CG: MY ADVICE? LEAVE WELL ENOUGH ALONE.
CG: LATER, IDIOT.
 
-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased trolling telesticGuise [TG] --

"Definitely blackflirting," Dave mutters to himself with a triumphant snicker. Not because of blackflirting—lord knows he couldn't care less about Karkat's romantic intentions—but because he got Karkat to 'let one slide'. For a few moments, his stupid treacherous alien brain isn't the centrepiece of his life, and he can just relish this point in time—something he's been missing since losing his dominion over the aspect. And that, more than anything, is what feels good.

But sometimes, Dave just feels so weak.

It's not the loss of his time powers, anymore. He'll have little jumps and starts here and there, moments where five minutes pass and he doesn't even register them, but for the most part he's finally acclimated his psyche to the rigours of a linear, unalienable timescale again. If he's honest with himself, he's glad to be rid of the burden of time travel, of being the one upon whose shoulders the entirety of the future rested. Even mistakes can be treasured when they just continue to propagate, when whatever happens simply happens instead of devolving into a crisis that's his responsibility to solve. He doesn't need to be a god anymore, not when his mind takes him through vivid imagery of titans long passed that, if Aradia is to be believed, herald much larger things to come.

It's the small things, the seemingly mundane details he'd never considered, the trickles of thought and sprinkles of planning that flow and collect and become a thrashing sea amidst the typhoon of his new life.

Before the Game—he hates to even think of the name for it anymore, he's so glad trolls don't have suburbs—his plans had been grandiose in his own youthful mind. Petty ideals, a part of him realizes now, but they're the threads to a past he can never have, a past he refuses to let go of.

Foremost he'd always wanted to meet Jade and, once contact was established with this strange new species of girl, perhaps they could even 'go steady'. When the transformation had come the plan hadn't changed, except 'strange new species of girl' became a hilarious metaphor for their alien state. Lately, though, it's proven less metaphor and more reality. She's always been wild; it's part of what's always drawn him to her, part of why he liked her so much. She was wild, carefree, happy just to exist. But now that he's a troll, and can't quite reconcile himself to the fact that he will forever be a troll, such ideals become roadblocks when he tries to maintain the bonds of friendship with someone who is so utterly accepting.

-- telesticGuise [TG] began trolling gregariousGreenskeeper [GG] --
 
TG: so i think were probably both aware of the goddamn do si do weve been doing here for like what a month now
TG: you and i on the dance floor alone im pat swayze youre jennifer grey and were going to get hella footloose in this shit
TG: oh my god am i seriously starting to talk about footloose
TG: im off my game shit
TG: im so off my game even the head coach of the other team is like goddamn son that boy needs to get on the puck
TG: they try to pass me the sponge and i fumble it like a fucking idiot
TG: coach tells me hes disappointed in me
TG: tells me i could have scored a home run if i hadnt pulled out a half-assed fraymotif for an irish jig when they tossed me the rock
TG: im never going to win dancing with the stars bowl at this rate
GG: what are you talking about????
TG: sports
GG: oh
GG: boring /:K
TG: well yeah
TG: but look we need to like
TG: talk or something
TG: like actually talk instead of getting stuck in an endless loop of saying "we need to talk" over and over again like a broken record
GG: i know!!!
GG: geez be patient
GG: ive been really busy lately with stuff
GG: i keep trying to deal with nepeta but theres been planning and its just kind of sucked up all my free time
TG: planning
TG: what like another bullshit furry eduventure or something
TG: please dont tell me youre getting on the troll magic schoolbus
TG: what would she even have to teach you
TG: advanced pointers on how to slaughter native fauna
TG: though i guess thats probably nothing to slitting your neighbours throat and wearing their guts like garters
TG: ok nm i just grossed myself out
TG: what are you even doing out there though
TG: last time we talked you told me squiddles were stupid human bullshit
GG: dave there arent squiddles anymore
GG: besides interests change!!
GG: am i just not allowed to develop new ones now
TG: that isnt what i meant
GG: good!!! besides i still have some old interests
GG: like rp and stuff
GG: thats what our plans are (:K
GG: if it all goes well we might be able to actually convince equius to let us start our own flarp team!!!
TG: are you kidding me
TG: im not even going to touch the horns on the emote
TG: but youre acting like earth and humans and stuff were all just some fever dream to you
TG: like it doesnt even matter
TG: like its some sort of fucking joke to you that the universe just pulled a disappearing act on where we came from and who we were
TG: and now flarp
TG: wow
GG: uh...
TG: so okay let me just clarify
TG: because if this is what i think then i wanna be diamond clear
TG: you and your new bff the semipsychotic catgirl are going to make an attempt to bust onto the scene of organized mass murder
TG: and youre excited about it
GG: so what????
GG: yes i am excited about it!!! now when i blast someone snooping around my hive i can claim experience buffers for it
GG: god just because humans were some pathetic docile race doesnt mean trolls have to be too!
TG: what am i even reading
TG: its like youre not even the same person anymore
TG: its like youre glad to be a troll now
GG: well i AM!!!!
GG: there i said it
GG: im glad to be a troll!!!!
GG: ive never felt better
GG: i get to meet people and play with them and im not alone now
GG: i get to have fun and do stuff that i like to do instead of stuff thats just there for me to do
GG: how does that make me a bad person or different than who i was??
TG: so thats just fucking it then
TG: just like a switch
TG: boom, horns and gray skin and suddenly your humanity counts for shit
GG: im not human so i dont even have humanity
GG: neither do you though
GG: were all trolls now
TG: jesus
TG: harley
TG: i cant do this
TG: im done
 
-- telesticGuise [TG] ceased trolling gregariousGreenskeeper [GG] --

She's not quite done, though, and when Dave looks up again she's opened a new window so she can have the final say.

 
-- gregariousGreenskeeper [GG] began trolling telesticGuise [TG] --
 
GG: well good!!!!
GG: im done too!
GG: so pack up your weird human shit and find a moirail to cry over it with you!!!!!
 
-- gregariousGreenskeeper [GG] has blocked telesticGuise [TG] --

Dave and Jade had never bickered or fought so much as stood at cross-purposes. Since changing, there always seemed to be a slowly widening disconnect between the two of them; they would respond not quite to each other but at each other. This, Dave supposes, had been bubbling under the surface for a while.

In a way, it's almost refreshing for it to come to a head like this. He gets an emotional release, an overwhelming rush of blood to the head that gradually drifting apart wouldn't have given him at all. He doesn't have to expend an effort at maintaining a false facade of civility and goodwill; he can turn inward and contemplate this clean break, how it changes something inside him. It wakes a primeval organ deep inside of him, looses a terrible and hungry beast that swallows him up with an emotion he doesn't even understand until it permeates every fibre of his being, until the feeling is so strong it throbs against the back of his skull, buffeting his brain like a thunderstorm, clawing against his eyelids for escape.

Anger is different now. On Earth, anger is something that you solve. Here, it's never that simple; it's something that trolls define and qualify not with whether but with how much. To a certain extent, Dave was expecting some of this—he'd been warned that the intensity of an emotion could easily overwhelm any troll, sometimes when least expecting it. But this is more than Dave could ever have imagined. The anger burns at the edges of his nerves, clouds his vision into a red haze, and arrests all other thought. It's a binding force and it feels almost eternal, like the pure, unbridled rage that rises in his throat can reach back and forward in time and transform everything he has ever known into a feeding ground to spawn more of itself.

The darker fringes of his mind tell him to succumb—and he entertains it for longer than he feels he should, because it's just that powerful in his mind—but he manages to stave it off. He knows better than that. If he wants to hold any kind of moral high ground, moral sea-level at least, anything but moral-fucking-Death-Valley, where Jade and her new friends are resting comfortably, he needs to be stronger than his overwhelming urge to throttle her, pin her against a wall, kill her?—he unthinks that with a violent shake of his head. Jade might have scuttled her humanity in search of something new, but Dave still has something to keep him grounded, and he tells himself that as he shuts his husktop. Carefully, so he doesn't snap it with a strength he's still not quite used to.

He slumps on the couch and it makes a faint creak of protest at the weight of the world being dropped onto it. He closes his eyes as he lays back, forcing his mind away from the dark thoughts, thoughts he isn't yet accustomed to and doesn't want. Already sleep is tugging at him, and he can hear whispers, whispers that should alarm him but feel so natural that he sleeps all the quicker. It's just one more gentle push and he slips away from the waking world and into that of dreams.

Chapter Text

"Now your statues are standing and pouring sweat. They shiver with dread. The black blood drips from the highest rooftops. They have seen the necessity of evil. Get out, get out of my sanctum and drown your spirits in woe."

—Tomhas Kruize, oracle of the Lyrene Clan (later executed), to his clansmen

What Dave always forgets about sleeping outside his recuperacoon is that there really is no elegant way to angle his head to accommodate his horns in a way that doesn't give him a pulsing neck ache. The pain assaults him in waves, and for a few moments he's unsure of whether he'll ever be able to lift his head of his own accord again. Laboriously, he hefts himself up like a ragdoll and readjusts himself until he's comfortable enough that he can begin to think about something other than the tightness in his muscles.

When the glacial wall in his mind begins to recede, there's a flood of new information, coming from every corner of his senses. Nothing makes sense; sense isn't even on his radar. Sense is something that comes from another planet where his dreams don't fill up with his friends' dead ancestors, a planet where people don't abruptly develop retrocognitive and telekinetic abilities. Sense, Dave has concluded, is not for people like him anymore, and he still struggles to reckon with the meaning of anything in this ass-backwards world.

TG: so i know youre going to lose your shit about this but remember our old friend casteclamp grandpa vantas
TG: well he just released a new hit single it was playing on dave fm yesterday morning
TG: but wait it doesnt end there because i guess the smooth sound of sizzling flesh isnt enough to top the charts these days
TG: so guest stars catchick sr. and hot mom maryam took to the mic
TG: big angry buzzing dude kind of fucking losing his shit and hissing at someone
TG: i dont know who the hell that was but he really stole the show
CG: MY HATE HAS NEVER BURNED QUITE SO BRIGHTLY AND PLATONICALLY AS IT DOES NOW. I HAVE NEVER WANTED TO REACH THROUGH THE SCREEN, GRAB YOU BY YOUR LUDICROUSLY AND DISPROPORTIONATELY LARGE HORNS, DRAG YOU THROUGH, AND THROTTLE YOU AS SEVERELY AS I DO IN THIS INSTANT.
TG: okay thats blackflirting
 
-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] has blocked telesticGuise [TG] --
 

There's no hiding it any longer, Dave supposes. He's kept it quiet for a few equinoxes now, not wanting every last interaction with him to be about his visions, about how irredeemably crazy he feels like he's become. He's halfway to crazy already just thinking about it at all, about what it means to be an alien or a psychic or an alien psychic or any of these things that would have held no meaning to him just a year ago. So he decides there can't be any harm to coming out with it all.

TG: so "i see dead people" is really the shittiest line in the history of pop culture but im gonna have to start this somewhere

Rose has heard the rumours about Dave's psychic abilities, and he's made a few oblique references to the things that he's seen, but up until now it's remained largely the personal domain of Dave, Sollux, Aradia, and Karkat. But the next time there's more information from Dave and Aradia—the spokespeople for the "asshole psychic brigade", in Karkat's colourful terminology—they share it publicly with others, and Karkat really doesn't take well to it.

CURRENT carcinoGeneticist [CCG] RIGHT NOW opened memo on board DO WE REALLY HAVE TO HAVE ANOTHER CONVERSATION REGARDING PROGNOSTICATIONS WITH POTENTIALLY INTERGALACTIC REPERCUSSIONS.
 
CCG: AAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUURGGHHHHH.
 

"Take well to it" is a charitable interpretation, Rose decides. Karkat's patience is a short fuse in a powder magazine on the best of days, and the unreachable, numinous mystery of Dave's recurring visions is trying Karkat's well-worn nerves in new and creative ways. Rose, herself, finds these flashes of inspiration of what their future might hold to be intriguing, even if she's beginning to suspect that there might be a more sinister purpose behind these recurring prophetic dreams.

She, too, has nightmares, after all. They don't provide glimpses of a past long forgotten, like Dave's; the dreams are there for something else. More often than not, black formless creatures hover at the edge of her vision as sleep approaches to remind her of the decisions she's made. And in sleep, they whisper of the importance that she and her friends will play in the days to come. Rose doesn't know how much of it to believe, but a picture is beginning to congeal in her mind, and she's not sure she likes where it's going. For now, she simply observes as the conversation unfolds.

CCG: HAVE I JUST NOT BEEN CLEAR ENOUGH UP UNTIL NOW?
CCG: HAS EVERY SINGLE LAST ONE OF YOU CONVENIENTLY FORGOTTEN WHAT HAPPENED THE LAST TIME WE LISTENED IN TO OUR FAVOURITE RADIO SHOW, "PROPHECY OF THE ASSHOLES?"
CCG: IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING, THAT HAS NOT BEEN RENEWED FOR ANOTHER SEASON. IT WAS SMOTHERED LIKE A GRUB IN ITS CONTAINMENT QUADRANGLE BEFORE IT COULD CRY FOR HELP. SO BEFORE YOU START ROLLING WITH THE PUNCHES LIKE A HATCHBROOD THAT GETS PASSED OVER WHEN THE TIME COMES TO DOLE OUT THE SCHOOLFEED OF LIFE LESSONS AND FUCKS AROUND IN BLISSFUL IGNORANCE UNTIL THE CULLING HOUR, MAYBE YOU'LL THINK ABOUT HOW YOU, INDIVIDUALLY, ARE A FUCKING IDIOT.
CCG: LET'S TAKE TURNS, EVERYONE WILL HAVE A MOMENT UNDER THE MICROSCOPE IN THIS TRAVESTY OF GOOD SENSE. NOW, WHO WOULD LIKE TO KICK OFF THE CEREMONIAL GRUNTBEAST BLADDER AND OPEN THE CEREMONIES?
CCG: MAYBE YOU, ARADIA?
CCG: COME ON, YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER THAN THIS. RECRUITING A CREDULOUS HAS-BEEN ALIEN TO FURTHER WHATEVER YOUR INSCRUTABLE AGENDA MIGHT BE IS AT BEST GOING TO ACHIEVE NOTHING AND, MORE LIKELY, WILL GET US ALL KILLED, RENDERING THIS ENTIRE BULLSHIT ABOUT MY "ANCESTOR" CLAMPED TO A POLE WITH HIS SYMBOLS COMPLETELY POINTLESS.
CCG: NEXT UP. STRIDER! YOU GRUBGARGLING HIGH-YIELD GUIDED HOOFBEASTSHIT MANUFACTURING APPARATUS!!!
CCG: I DON'T NEED YOU MAKING MY JOB HARDER THAN IT ALREADY IS WITH TRYING TO KEEP THE REST OF THESE FUCKING INGRATES FROM GETTING THEMSELVES KILLED.
CCG: YOU CAN KNOCK OFF THE ACT NOW, THERE IS NO TROLL OSCAR WITH YOUR NAME ON IT, THERE IS NO CEREMONY, AND NO MATTER HOW WELL YOU ACT AS MEGIDO'S CREEPY SIDEKICK, YOU'RE JUST GOING TO MAKE EVERYTHING WORSE FOR EVERYONE.
CCG: LET'S CONTINUE. TEREZI! ROSE! SOLLUX! AS THE CONTINGENT OF THOSE WHO CAN ACTUALLY TOLERATE HIM ON A DAILY BASIS, I AM HOLDING YOU PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR FAILING TO KEEP HIM FROM SPEWING SHIT LIKE A GARBAGE COMPACTOR WITH A BUSTED GAUGE.
CCG: BUT AS IT SO OFTEN DOES, THE RESPONSIBILITY FALLS TO ME TO GENTLY REACH MY HAND OUT, GRAB HIM BY THE SPONGECLOT, AND WHISPER SOFTLY, BUT WITH EVER-INCREASING URGENCY, GET OVER YOURSELF SHITLORD, THEY'RE DAYMARES.
CCG: THAT'S IT, MY PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE EQUINOX IS DONE, CAN WE ALL AGREE THAT IT WAS A TERRIBLE DECISION TO GATHER ROUND THE CAMPFIRE AND LISTEN TO DAVE TELL THE STORY OF HIS ADVENTURES THROUGH TIME?
CCG: THANKS, MEMO OVER.
CURRENT telesticGuise [CTG] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CTG: hey im going to have to take over here for a minute
CCG: DON'T DO THAT.
CTG: denzel is going to call a time out on the field theres some real shit going down in the engine room
CTG: if everyone werent slackjawed trying to get over how wrong you were right up there maybe we could have salvaged a made-for-tv action movie out of this
CCG: DAVE.
CTG: but instead im here in mission control watching as you try to crank this fucker up to max speed
CTG: the town is a mile ahead
CTG: can he save the day or will he blow it all up??? its all up to denzel and his youthful sidekick
CTG: shit wheres my youthful sidekick
CURRENT apocalypseArisen [CAA] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CAA: here
CTG: word
CTG: anyway the point is were shutting down this locomotive
CTG: everybody clear out this is the end of the line
CTG: denzel has stopped the train
CCG: BETTER IDEA
CCG banned CTG from responding to memo.
CCG: ANY QUESTIONS?
CAA: karkat i understand that it can be difficult to comprehend the auguries of the dead let alone place ones trust in them
CAA: even i have trouble with it sometimes!
CAA: but the truth is that daves visions are a reflection of our purpose yet to come on alternia
CCG: THE TRUTH IS THAT I DO NOT ACTUALLY CARE, I'M NOT PLACING MY FAITH IN THE PSYCHIC BRAINTRUST THAT GOT US ENTANGLED IN THE LOVING CATASTROPHE TENTACLES OF SGRUB ANY MORE THAN I WOULD BE WILLING TO THROW MY HANDS IN THE AIR AND DECLARE MY UNDYING DEVOTION TO THE MIRTHFUL CHURCH OF MIRACULOUS ASSHATS.
CURRENT twinArmageddons [CTA] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CTA: wow kk even for you thii2 ii2 pu2hiing iit.
CTA: ii'm pretty 2ure aa ii2n't ju2t makiing thii2 2hiit up, and ii thiink ii would fuckiing KNOW.
CCG: DON'T EVEN START, DUDE.
CCG: I DON'T HAVE TIME TO DREDGE UP THE SOB STORY OF YOUR EMOTIONAL INSTABILITY JUST SO YOU CAN TURN AROUND AND KICK ME IN THE ASS WITH IT UNTIL YOU FEEL SMUG ENOUGH TO WALTZ OUT OF HERE.
CCG: NOW ARE YOU DONE HAVING AN EXTENDED PRACTICAL JOKE AT MY EXPENSE??
CTA: lii2ten a2 much a2 ii want two briing up my own traumatiic experiience2 iin order two metaphoriically iintroduce your frond nub iintwo your mumble gulch ii'm actually only here two 2iide wiith aa on the ii22ue.
CTA: iit'2 not compliicated. aa'2 riight, you're not, you're bad and you 2hould feel bad.
CURRENT gallowsCalibrator [CGC] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CGC: *H3R HONOUR4BL3 TYR4NNY F1NDS K4RK4T 1N CONT3MPT OF COURT 4ND S3NDS 4 DR4GON TO 34T H1M, OR M4YB3 JUST FROWN 4T H1M* >:[ >:[
CCG: BAD NEWS, TEREZI! I'M THE ONE WITH THE SILENCE MALLET HERE.
CCG: YOUR CONCERNS ARE NOTED, AND FILED IMMEDIATELY IN THE 'DON'T GIVE A SHIT' TRANSCRIPT FOLDER.
CCG banned CGC from responding to memo.
CURRENT caligulasAquarium [CCA] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CCA: for the record i wwant to say im sidin wwith kar
CCG: NOT HELPING HERE.
CTA: that'2 2ome company you have there kk.
CTA: look2 liike ed ii2 the only one who agree2 wiith you, are you thiinkiing of openiing the floor two get your a22 handed two you further or are you goiing two quiit whiile you're behiind.
CCA: oh shut up sol like you wwouldnt understand why im fuckin pissed by that kind a behavviour
CTA: what, that other people dare two have diifferent opiiniion2 from you?
CTA: yeah, ed. spooky gho2t2 told me two agree wiith 2triider just two pii22 you off. my plan2 are all comiing together.
CCA: you can fuckin joke about it but thats all it takes to justify the shit you pull
CCA: cant blame me for feelin li
CCA: wwait
CCA: shit
CCG: WHAT IS IT THIS TIME?
CCA: kar
CCA: your ancestor
CCA: OH FUCK
CCA: wwe gotta get out a here before the empire sees wwhat wwere talkin about

"Oh fuck" is right, Rose learns soon enough. Eridan's revelation doesn't come a moment too soon, and it's only through some delicate technological charioteering that Sollux is able to strike all conversations on the subject from the record and set up a more secure channel for communication. The topic of the Signless, as they'll soon come to understand, is one so thoroughly censored that even its mention within private journals is zealously censored. It is only now, in the panic and pandemonium between their attempts to furiously backtrack to where they were before it came up for the first time, that it begins to dawn on Rose what the "purpose" alluded to by Aradia several times might actually entail.

Sollux, meanwhile, is all business, setting aside personal distate for Eridan to protect everyone from being discovered by the Empire for discussing an illegal topic. Once he's erased the archives, Sollux guides everyone through the process of destroying their identifying information from the ground up. Finally, he ushers everyone into a new memo so that Eridan can explain himself. Once there, all eyes are on him.

CURRENT techneAsterias [CTA] RIGHT NOW opened memo on board aWkgaGF0ZSBhbGwgb2YgeW91.

CTA: everyone play niice here. we're 2afe from pryiing iimperial eye2, but ii 2wear two god iif you make me do tech 2upport on thii2 memo ii wiill be out of here 2o fuckiing fa2t.
CTA: alriight your iimperial condecensor2hiip, what's goiing on.
CURRENT corruptedAbsolution [CCA] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CCA: so heres wwhat wwere dealin wwith
CCA: kar im goin to need you not to flip your shit ok
CURRENT calumniedGehenna [CCG] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CCG: I HAVEN'T SAID ANYTHING. YOU HAVEN'T SAID ANYTHING. NOBODY'S SAID ANYTHING! HOW COULD I POSSIBLY BE FLIPPING MY SHIT????
CCA: see thats exactly wwhat im talkin about
CCA: i havvent evven told you wwhats goin on and youre already flippin a shit
CCG: LOOK, IF MY SHIT WERE ANY LESS FLIPPED RIGHT NOW IT WOULD BE SITTING THERE ON THE PAN, SLOWLY BURNING AND FILLING THE WHOLE CULINARY BLOCK WITH THE MIASMA OF BLACKENED SHITCAKE.
CCG: MY SHIT IS SO SEVERELY UNFLIPPED THAT I HAVEN'T EVEN GIVEN IT YET.
CCG: THE ONLY THING THAT COULD GALVANIZE ME INTO SAYING "FUCK IT" AND GIVING THAT ASSPATTY A PROPER ONE-EIGHTY WOULD BE YOU, ERIDAN, CONTINUING TO WARN ME NOT TO FLIP MY SHIT.
CCG: LET'S LEAVE THE SHITCAKE WHERE IT IS, OKAY?
CCA: jeez fine
CCA: i wwas just tryin to be fuckin CONSIDERATE here i knoww this isnt a topic you wwant to get into
CCA: the point is
CCA: davve is right that wwas your ancestor
CCA: an it turns out that he wwas one a the greatest revvolutionaries in imperial history
CCG: YOU *HAVE* TO BE KIDDING ME.
CURRENT telicTheomastix [CTT] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CTT: Give him a chance to explain himself, Karkat. I'm curious as to where this is going.
CURRENT tephroticGladius [CTG] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CTG: so setting aside the schlocky dan brown story where we end up finding out youre the direct descendant of a first rate alien jesus larper what does that even mean like
CTG: it looks like your "greatest revolutionary" there had his ass handed to him on a burning iron platter by whoever the fuck that was putting him buzz lightyear and friends down
CTG: its like toy story but instead of with toys its with our personal alien nursing home
CTT: Aren't you the one that brought this up to begin with, Dave?
CTG: yeah sure when it was just casteclamp and friends it just seemed kinda weird that i was getting ancient alien cinemax
CTG: but other than that it doesnt sound like that much to write home about
CTT: You could have had the decency to let us know about it, at the very least.
CTT: Some of us are fans of classic film.
CURRENT genesisAverted [CGA] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CGA: See What Id Like To Know Is
CGA: Whos The One That Dave Called Hot Mom Maryam
CCG: MY GANDERBULBS HAVE BEGUN A SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE TRIGGERED BY SHEER REVULSION AND SHAME AIDED AND ABETTED BY A GENEROUS HELPING OF ALL-CONSUMING SCORN. DAVE, YOU CANNOT COMPREHEND THE MAGNITUDE AND THE TOTALITY OF THE LOATHING YOU HAVE INCITED BY PROXY.
CCG: IN CASE I NEED TO REPEAT MYSELF, WHICH I OBVIOUSLY DO BECAUSE THE COLLECTIVE READING COMPREHENSION OF THIS MEMO RIVALS ONLY THE MOST SEVERELY MENTALLY IMPAIRED OF TUBEWORMS, *ANCESTORS ARE BULLSHIT!!!*
CCG: KANAYA, I'M PRETTY SURE DAVE JUST THINKS YOU'RE ATTRACTIVE.
CCG: SORRY TO DISAPPOINT YOU. I GUESS.
CGA: Uh
CURRENT gethsemaneGlorified [CGG] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CGG: well i think it sounds nice!!
CGG: i dont see the problem you have with it karkat id kind of like to hear more about the story from eridan
CURRENT animistTrinity [CAT] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CAT: wELL,
CAT: eVEN IF ANCESTORS ARE A THING THAT ARE NOT, fACTUALLY TRUE,
CAT: i THINK THEY ARE PRETTY COOL, gIVEN,
CAT: tHAT THEY CAN STILL BE IMPORTANT TO YOU,
CAT: fOR THINGS LIKE, sELF CONFIDENCE,
CCG: I'M SURROUNDED BY IDIOTS.
CURRENT gibbetCanard [CGC] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CGC: K4RK4T, 1 UND3RSTOOD WHY YOU D1DNT L1K3 4NC3STORS WH3N YOU D1DNT KNOW WHO YOUR FOR3B34R W4S
CGC: BUT NOW YOU DO 4ND 1T TURNS OUT H3 W4S B4D4SS, 1 DONT G3T WHY YOU TH1NK TH4TS STUP1D >:?
CCG: I AM DANGEROUSLY CLOSE TO COLLAPSING IN ON MYSELF AND BECOMING THE PURE, PLATONIC IDEAL OF CONCENTRATED DETESTATION.
CCA: KARKAT SHUT UP IVVE GOT IMPORTANT SHIT TO SAY
CCA: this is wwhy i told you not to flip your shit in the first place look wwhere its gotten us
CCG: NO, DO NOT START DOWN THIS ROAD AGAIN, ERIDAN, YOU ARE ON THIN FUCKING ICE.
CCA: wwhatevver
CTG: see eridan what im trying to figure out is
CTG: how do you even know about him when apparently nobody else here has half a fucking clue whats going on
CTG: weve all been sitting around like a bunch of assholes since p-day (thats bizlingo for prophecy day my man sollux knows whats up)
CTA: word up two your lu2u2.
CTG: sup
CTG: anyway point is
CTG: not saying i dont believe you obviously thatd be kind of stupid considering the whole goddamn three ring circus it took to get here but id appreciate you filling us in
CCA: wwell if you really wwant to knoww
CTG: no im just here with a finger up my ass minding my own business
CTG: of course i want to know
CCA: so none a you havve probably evver heard a this before
CCA: but this is wwhat really happened to the sufferer

It is not until now that Dave decides that he is fucked. He is so fucked, he amends after further thought, so thoroughly and comprehensively fucked that he figures it's not worth stopping by the pharmacy for the pregnancy test on his way to the abortion clinic. Until Eridan explained exactly who Karkat's ancestor was, and why he was important, Dave could be forgiven for thinking that his retrocognitive abilities were—by Alternian standards—rather unremarkable. Now he can't maintain that comforting personal fiction. According to the history books, he's managed to earn his wings as a prophet for a long-lost dissident somewhere between Jesus Christ and Che Guevara.

It's a tall enough order for him to figure himself out as a telekinetic space alien with a psychic connection to his best buddy's ancient history progenitor, but this revelation adds another level to his suspension of disbelief altogether. Sometimes, when he stays over, Rose tries to send him off to the spare room to go to sleep, only for him to sombrely rebuff her, explaining to her in his sleepless haze that he is waiting patiently for his "stone tablets gilt with commandments from Karkat's almighty grandpa."

Nobody else really knows what to do about it, either. Karkat avoids him for a while, more unnerved by the fact that the asshole who's become—well, they were certainly as amicable as trolls could be, though even now he feels strange uttering the word that comes to mind—something approaching friends with him is now being touted by half of the people he knows as the oracle of a long-dead dissident preacher and revolutionary. It is only made stranger for Karkat that said dissident turns out to be his direct genetic forebear, and stranger still for Dave to try to interact with someone he knows to be a direct descendant of a secret religious hero.

But they can't stay apart forever. By the end of the equinox, Dave and Karkat have managed to exhaust their excuses for not talking to each other, and their mutual friends are weary of serving as go-betweens. Rose stages a small-scale intervention, confronting Dave directly when he pays her an early-evening visit.

You're up early.
so i just want you to know that youre valued and great and i appreciate everything you do for me
I'm not going to be your Prophecy Courier, Dave. If you want Karkat to join you for Psychic Bible Study, it won't kill you to ask him that yourself.
damn it
but this ones important
That's all the more reason to present it yourself, wouldn't you say?
ok that was probably the lamest possible way for me to paint myself into a corner with this argument
im kind of wishing i could use my former nonspecific time powers to mess with that one and come out of this conversation clearly victorious
but then id have to ensure that i actually said the exact same thing or else face a really grisly pileup of dead daves
plus id have to sit there like a chump rehearsing and reliving my shame over this exact moment
so you know what
fuck it im sticking to my guns
As long as you go talk to Karkat.
shit
i forgot about that part of the deal
ok but the real question is
why are you getting on my case so early do you actually wake up at this hour or something
is there some sort of secret snarkblood coven that meets under the cover of the light to discuss how theyre going to oppress olive on down
youre forgetting your hood careful or i might get a glimpse into the mysteries of the cult
and then man once a lowbloods onto you guys the fabric of society as we know it will fall apart
cats and dogs interbreeding and oh wait harley and leijon are already practically bulgebuddies
Scandal! Young rustblood, known to friends as "that guy with a blog", uncovers sinister violet conspiracy.
While we're on the topic of headlines one would never see printed, what's the important message for Karkat? Something from you or from the others in the constituency of somnolent visionaries?
actually
this didnt come from me
believe it or not harley brought it to me last night
Jade came to you?
i was surprised too we really didnt end things well
but anyway i think you might want to see

From his sylladex comes a book that seems so ancient that Dave can scarcely believe it's able to hold itself together. Handling the tome gently, he cracks the spine and turns the volume to its title page.

Is that...?
the troll bible
i think so

She can't hold back a quiet gasp, and her eyes glow with a curiosity he's rarely seen in her—at least since the game. Still holding the book as if it were made of glass, he makes a motion and tenders it to her gingerly.

The Gospel of Meulin, the Disciple.
i think its catgirl 1.0
some of the stuff she writes about in there is stuff i saw that only happened between her and old man vantas
What do you think?
Does it make for decent light reading?
probably better than most of the shit that gets published these days
can you believe that there isnt a gruesome murder on every page
tbh i felt cheated i was expecting some old testament shit to happen in the book
like someone tries to kill troll jesus
and he calls down a plague of fuckin troll locusts who pick their bones clean shows you not to fuck with the son of god
shit wait trolls dont have dads
incest egg baby of god
there we go. nailed it
I can't wait to read your book of prophecies.
Perhaps you'll send me a rough draft to beta-read?
on the seventh day troll yahweh said you know what fuck this if adam and eve have another kid every time they fuck pretty soon nobody will get to enjoy the garden of eden
i know what ill do
if they want to have kids theyll have to send their jizz in buckets to a giant bug living in a cave
Never mind, I shouldn't have entrusted you with that kind of responsibility.
I'm rescinding my offer.

Though Rose seems to briefly consider letting him go and trusting him to approach Karkat, a larger part of her thinks better of it and beckons him to join her in the study. When he enters the room, she sits him down in front of a computer and explains patiently that he isn't going to be able to leave until he brings Karkat into the loop himself. He makes overtures of protestation, but can't convince Rose otherwise, so he relents, drooping his shoulders and taking a seat, all the while making a show of his false exasperation with her.

CURRENT tephroticGladius [CTG] RIGHT NOW opened memo on board dGhpcyBpcyB0aGUgcmVhbCB0aGluZyBmb2xrcw==.
 
CTG: so at the risk of sounding like a total tool im just going going to do a full on facedive into the shit here
CURRENT telicTheomastix [CTT] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CTT: I am so proud of you, Dave.
CTG: no lalonde dont interfere here this is my swan lake and i am the disgusting hybrid dung beetle/black swan
CTG: i think troll natalie portman would be a good fit for my lifes inevitable motion picture adaptation
CTG: also not gonna object to troll mila kunis makeouts
CTG: could skip the death part at the end though
CTG: but then again maybe not lets hear what our buddy vantas has to say about it all
CURRENT calumniedGehenna [CCG] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CCG: OH MY FUCKING GOD.
CTG: youre like clockwork buddy
CCG: ARE WE SERIOUSLY GOING TO GO THROUGH THIS ROUTINE AGAIN?
CCG: PART OF ME THINKS YOU ARE PROBABLY BEYOND SAVING, BUT
CCG: NO, I THINK THIS IS REALLY A GOOD TIME FOR ME TO COME IN AND INTRODUCE SOME SCHOOLFEED INTO YOUR PROPHECY NOZZLE.
CTG: uh
CCG: YOU'RE RIGHT, I HAVE TO HAND IT TO YOU THERE.
CCG: IN THE FILM IN WHICH A DANSASSIN PLAYED BY TROLL NATALIE PORTMAN VIES FOR THE LEAD ROLE IN A PRODUCTION WITH (YOU GUESSED IT) TROLL MILA KUNIS, AND SO ON, BECAUSE I REALLY DON'T HAVE THE MOTIVATION TO REHEARSE THE WHOLE DAMN TITLE TO YOU RIGHT NOW, THE ONLY NARRATIVE CLOSURE ARRIVES THROUGH THE INEVITABLE, GRUESOME CULLING OF BOTH OF THEM!
CCG: SO, AS THE GUY WHO'S APPARENTLY THE ONLY ONE LOOKING OUT FOR EVERYONE'S SKIN HERE, IT'S MY RESPONSIBILITY TO ARREST YOUR TRAIN OF THOUGHT BEFORE IT PROCEEDS TIREDLY INTO ANOTHER "UNSTOPPABLE" REFERENCE, OR SO HELP ME GOD, MY PREDICTION OF YOU GETTING YOUR ASS CULLED WILL FEATURE PROMINENTLY IN YOUR FUTURE.
CTG: no dude chill weve just been barking up the wrong tree is all
CCG: AH! SUDDENLY EVERYTHING IS CLEARER NOW. ALL OF MY CONCERNS AND PROTESTATIONS TURN TO DUST UPON THIS REVELATION, NEVER MIND THE FACT THAT THE LAST TIME YOU SAID SOMETHING LIKE THAT WE GOT OURSELVES KILLED BY A PSYCHOTIC HELLHOUND.
CCG: WE'VE SIMPLY BEEN BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE.
CCG: YOU APPARENTLY HAVE ALL THE DIRECTIONS. PLEASE, STRIDER, SHOW ME THE WAY TO THE RIGHT ONE.
CTT: What Dave is trying to say, in his own inept, roundabout fashion, is that he has new and vital information to share with everyone.
CTT: Don't you, Dave?
CTG: yes maam
CTG: everyone break out your notepads and your sunday finest because psychic bible school is now in session
CCG: STILL NOT SEEING THIS "NEW AND VITAL INFORMATION".
CTG: hold your fuckin hoofbeasts karkat im getting there
CTG: basically the long and the short of it is
CTG: we found the troll holy bible
CCG: OH! MORE TRANSPARENCY AND FORTHRIGHTNESS! I CAN'T BELIEVE I DIDN'T GIVE YOU THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT THIS ENTIRE TIME.
CCG: DAVE, WHAT IN GOD'S UNCTUOUS BILGE CHUTE IS THE "TROLL HOLY BIBLE", PLEASE, DON'T HESITATE TO EDUCATE US ALL.
CTG: oh my god
CTG: i change my mind rose please assume all responsibilities of prophecy courier im outie
CTT: You're going to stay here until every last syllable that you told to me has been echoed, however breathlessly and impatiently, to Karkat here.
CTT: He deserves to know this, at the very least.
CTG: fine okay
CTG: remember me telling you about your old mans catgirl buddy
CTG: turns out she wrote a whole book about his life
CCG: SHE DID WHAT.
CCG: WHERE DID YOU GET THIS?
CURRENT gethsemaneGlorified [CGG] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CGG: i found it
CCG: OH
CCG: HI, JADE.
CCG: I GUESS THE QUESTION BEARS REPEATING ALL THE SAME, WHERE DID YOU FIND THE BOOK?
CGG: during a flarp campaign
CGG: i was trying to corner someone in one of the caves not too far from where nepeta lives
CGG: but then after i claimed my kill i looked around in the cave and there was all this writing!!!
CGG: i decided to check out the whole cavern and hidden in the back i found the book
CCG: WOW.
CCG: ALL RIGHT, I GIVE, DAVE. THIS IS REALLY FUCKING IMPORTANT.
CTG: no kidding
CCG: BUT!!! I SWEAR TO GOD IF I SEE A SINGLE PERSON SUGGESTING A PLAN THAT INVOLVES STARTING A REVOLUTION, I WILL PERSONALLY EXTRACT THEIR SHAME GLOBES THROUGH THEIR WINDHOLE.
CTG: i dont care if this is all some shitty fanfiction written by karkat seniors groupies its the first hard evidence weve gotten so im sticking by it
CTT: So what does this mean moving forward?
CURRENT anarchicApocrypha [CAA] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CAA: isnt it obvious
CAA: it means were starting a revolution

And that settles it. Karkat puts up nominal resistance to the idea, but even he can't deny that the prospect sounds appealing. Once three prophets have undersigned the idea, any other debate over the topic becomes a simple formality. Regardless of whether everyone believes that an overthrow of the current system of government is in the cards, everyone certainly wants to believe it. Even Karkat, loath as he is to endorse any plan that seems to threaten the delicate balance of his anonymity, and Eridan—whose beliefs on the hierarchy prejudice him against any toppling of the order of things—finally relent in the face of the evidence.

"The evidence", of course, is the inalienable combination of a holy book and a prophet. Dave isn't sure when he started believing in the promises of a long-dead alien, but somewhere along the way it's become the only thing left to look forward to, superseding all of the petty concerns of his childhood. Truth be told, even when he tries to concentrate on the past he can't remember what his plans for adulthood had been. Dimly, he can remember a time when his grandest ideas for the future involved becoming a DJ, but now the idea strikes him as so patently ridiculous that he barely gives it any thought. All he has is this idea that maybe, if the ramblings of this ancient pariah are anything more than a delusional fever-dream, that his life might finally have the meaning he never knew he's always craved.

The next several weeks are tense, atmosphere thick with plotting and the wild, juvenile enthusiasm of rebellion. But at the end of the day, it's clear to everyone involved that the scheming has to wait until they're powerful enough to pose a threat to the Empress. For now, it's the one thing that ties them all together in a world that strives for nothing more than to drive them all apart.

Chapter Text

"It is nothing to die; it is horrible not to live."

—Demiel Lovato, authorturer (later executed), from The Miserable

A whole sweep has passed before the caste authorities begin scripts. Scripts, Rose learns quickly, is an abbreviation for Preparatory Basic Training and Schoolfeeding for Military Conscription. It is the closest institution Alternia has to high school, and it serves as the first and most significant segment of preparatory education for eventual employment within the Empire. Somehow, she can't will herself to be surprised by the fact that it also closely resembles a sudden-death survivalist day camp. Every message she receives from the authorities serves only to confirm her suspicions further. Even though the first message is innocuous enough—regarding the required books and husktop software for her classes—they quickly devolve into messages that would be artful self-parody if they weren't so horrifying. "Culling Law during Conscription," begins one of them, and despite her fears of what it might hold she can't resist opening it up and reading the details.

To all those who will be attending Preparatory Basic Training and Schoolfeeding for Military Conscription Initiation Ceremonies: recall that all Imperial Culling Statutes are still in effect during the ceremonies, and enforcement will continue throughout your education. Here are some helpful reminders for expected behaviour while attending Conscription:
 
FOR THOSE OF VIOLET CASTE: Culling is permissible (and encouraged!) upon witnessing the following violations in lower hemocaste:
- Theft
- Trespassing
- Incitement of hemoviolence
- Culling without authorization
- Culling with authorization (see form ICS-8)
- False representation of hemocaste
- Sedition
- Crimes against the Empire
- Unsanctioned cahoots
 

The list goes on further, but she skims the majority of the remainder; it only further confirms what she already knows, which is that she has been gifted licence to kill at whim, and that all of her friends would be subject to that authority. Still, she can't help stifling a dismayed laugh at the postscript:

REMEMBER: Report all culling to the Bureau of Death, Recycling, and Food Services! Failure to do so may result in arraignment before the Appellate Circuit of the Supreme Justicar of Alternia, His Honourable Tyranny M'threghtbhgh XXI.

Rose is just beginning to realize just what it means for her to be royalty; Dave calls her a "literal fish princess," but it isn't before she sees the enumeration of the vast inequalities between the two of them that she realizes how much he's right. They're training him to be a disposable army grunt, while she'll be groomed for admiralty, governorship, or some other post of prestige.

Rose mulls over her options. If she's being frank with herself the thought of a military career fills her with distaste, though she imagines she could probably handle anything required of her. There's a silent mumble of assent from the back of her mind, a quiet endorsement of her thought process from the darkened corner she's learned not to think about too hard. It doesn't take long, in any event, to find that her preference does not enter into the Empire's decisionmaking process.

Conscription doesn't resemble any form of education that Rose has ever received. There's a professor who stands at the front of the class during lectures, to be sure, but this is perhaps the only similarity she notes among a constellation of other activities. Physical fitness, she finds, is particularly prized. The bulk of her day not devoted to the classroom is instead set aside to ensure that she will serve as a hand of the Empire when they call upon her. Some days, this is through the practice of a martial art whose goal is to inflict as much agony as possible without the use of a weapon. Other days, it's simple enforcement of discipline through fear, dispatching recruits who have failed summarily and with uniquely Alternian aplomb. So ingrained is the culture of death that some of her classes have learned to integrate it organically into the normal proceedings of the classroom.

Rose's first class in the evening is Rhetoric, where debate participants are graded on how effectively they intimidate their opponents, fittingly termed "combatants" in the adversary logic of the Alternian classroom. The fights that can and do break out in the proceedings of instruction, she learns, are not only considered unremarkable but are graded on their quality. After a particularly messy occasion that leaves three dead and thirteen wounded, the instructor launches a smooth segue into a dissection of the affirmative counsel for their failure to adequately intimidate their opposition. The first time it happens, Rose thinks she's going to be sick, but before too long she doesn't even think about it.

She can't will herself to be surprised that Terezi's very good at this.

Terezi's her study partner, a comrade in intellectual pursuits, and Rose grows to consider her a friend. But though she knows it's just an artifact of where they live, of the way things simply are here, it's a fact that doesn't rest easy in her mind. At the end of the day, she's befriending people who relish their kills.

The best Rose can say of having Rhetoric before anything else is that it makes the other classes seem tame in comparison. Culling Law, a staple for all citizens of the Empire, is an exercise in thought control through a legal bureaucracy so utterly complete that even extralegality is codified thoroughly. Rose can't make up her mind whether it's funny or desperately awful that killing outside the confines of the law is a straightforward matter of filling out paperwork. History of the Hemocaste is little different, a propaganda tool to ensure that she and her fellow violetbloods mature into the proper little Caligulas they are meant to be. It works, too; on more than one occasion, Rose finds herself struggling against the tide of silent assent in her classmates.

CA: listen roz i dont knoww about you but im about tired a this lowwblood hag teachin us laww
CA: no wwonder all a the teals alwways score best on her exams
CA: i bet she plays favvourites
TT: Listen.
TT: I don't particularly care about your hemofascism; your delusional political ideologies are yours to wallow in during your own free time, as far as I'm concerned.
TT: But that you continue contacting me bespeaks an outstanding arrogance that even I can't ignore any longer, mostly because you keep snivelling about your dissatisfaction with Professlaughterer Karnak's grading system.
TT: Personally, I have no complaints about my marks, but I have neither the interest nor the patience to discuss it at length.
TT: Just remember this: our collaboration to decrypt Dave's daymares should not be taken as evidence for the fact that our acquaintanceship has somehow changed since I made an example of your computer.
CA: hey wwait roz
CA: i didnt mean it like that i wwas just sayin
CA: you knoww
CA: seadwwellers ought a stick together an havve some sense a solidarity
TT: Eridan, I have about as much interest in solidarity with my blood caste as I have in a thriving, sexually active kismesissitude with a culling fork.
TT: Go find someone else to pester. I'm busy.
CA: glub

It's from these classroom interactions that Rose begins to grasp how profound the cultural chasm between her and everyone else is. Trolls are not designed for large-scale cohesion—that much has always been clear—but even classes like this, where the interactions are quite limited and largely confined to the unidirectional transmission of the lecturer to the students, seem to strain the boundaries of trolls' ability to tolerate company.

She's tried a few times to make acquaintances outside those she already knows, only to be rebuffed before too long; despite how much she might share in common with any of her fellow students, it's only her already-established acquaintances—even those whom she can barely grace by forgoing insult—who can be relied upon to provide even the vaguest degree of predictability. That measure and reservation, Rose finds, is the closest thing Alternia has to civility, and the threshold seems to be crossed only by the people she knows. Though Rose normally has little interest in investigating sociocultural differences for their own sake, she's left somewhat nonplussed and frustrated by her experiences with her peers, so she looks to Karkat for answers. She's not in regular contact with him like Dave is, but he's established himself as something of an authority on interspecies differences, and has grudgingly agreed to take questions from the erstwhile humans on unfamiliar concepts in Alternian society.

-- telicTheomastix [TT] began trolling calumniedGehenna [CG] --

TT: It just crossed my mind the other day.
CG: ...
CG: WHAT CROSSED YOUR MIND.
CG: YOU CAN'T JUST SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT AND LEAVE IT THERE LIKE SOME FORGOTTEN TWELFTH PERIGEE'S EVE SQUAWKBEAST IN THE OVEN SLOWLY GOING FROM OVERCOOKED TO HIDEOUSLY BLACKENED HUSK.
CG: FINISH THE GODDAMN SENTENCE, LALONDE
TT: On second thought...
CG: NO.
CG: YOU'RE HEREBY FORBIDDEN FROM HAVING SECOND THOUGHTS EVER AGAIN, FUCK YOU, EVERYTHING YOU LOVE, AND EVERYTHING YOU HAVE EVER HELD IN THE SLIGHTEST AMOUNT OF REGARD.
TT: Very well. If you insist.
TT: So...how do I phrase this.
TT: Karkat, do you have any insight into why none of the sixteen of us has ever forged a meaningful relationship outside of those that already existed when we began to play the game?
CG: WHAT, YOU MEAN OUTSIDE OF THE FACT THAT WE'RE THE ONLY ONES THAT REMEMBER THE INTERGALACTIC CLUSTERFUCK THAT WAS SGRUB, MAKING US ALL ABOUT FIVE TIMES TOO FUCKED OUT OF OUR SPONGES TO BE CONSIDERED BY MOST NORMAL TROLLS FOR A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP? OR ANY RELATIONSHIP AT ALL?
TT: As fair a point as any, I'll be honest.
CG: BUT NO, IT'S MORE THAN THAT.
CG: YOU'D HAVE TO BE UNFATHOMABLY VAPID NOT TO NOTICE, BUT TROLLS ARE PRETTY NATURALLY AVERSE TO SOCIAL GROUPS.
CG: EVEN IN SCHOOLFEEDING GROUPS, MOST OF THEM ARE GOING TO WANT TO KEEP TO THEMSELVES AND THEIR OWN PRE-ESTABLISHED CLIQUES.
CG: WE'VE TALKED ABOUT THIS BEFORE, BUT
CG: FRIENDSHIP ISN'T THE SORT OF THING THAT COMES NATURALLY TO TROLLS, AT LEAST NOT IN THE WAY THAT YOU HUMANS THOUGHT ABOUT IT.
CG: THAT KIND OF THINKING IS DISEASED AND, LET'S BE HONEST, IS ONLY GOING TO GET YOU KILLED ON ALTERNIA.
CG: GENERALLY, THE LONGER A SOCIAL BOND LIKE THAT MANAGES TO EXIST, THE HIGHER THE TENDENCY FOR IT TO GRAVITATE INTO ONE OF THE FOUR QUADRANTS, WHICH REALLY JUST MEAN THAT YOU WANT TO KNOW THE PERSON ON SOME LEVEL.
CG: EVEN A KISMESISSITUDE, THAT'S ROOTED IN MUTUAL RESPECT AND SOME DEGREE OF TRUST.
TT: All of that makes sense.
TT: But it doesn't really answer the question of why that's necessarily limited to this group of ours that already exists.
CG: I'M GETTING THERE.
CG: ONE OF THE NATURAL OUTGROWTHS OF A SYSTEM LIKE THAT IS THAT YOUR SOCIAL GROUP BECOMES A CLADE OF YOUR PARTNERS AND IN-LAWS.
CG: IT'S SOMETHING APPROACHING THE HUMAN CONCEPT OF FAMILIES, EXCEPT NOTHING LIKE THAT.
TT: But how does this apply to a group like ours, with few, if any, established relationships?
TT: I know of a few of them, to be sure, and suspect a few others, but that can't account for our entire group's cohesion.
CG: YOU'D BE SURPRISED.
CG: WITH ANY GROUP OF TROLLS, THE LONGER THEY STAND BEING AROUND EACH OTHER, THE HIGHER THE LIKELIHOOD THAT THEY'RE PROBABLY GOING TO END UP WITH EACH OTHER SOMEWHERE WITHIN A ROMANTIC QUADRANT.
CG: AND RELATIONSHIPS DON'T HAVE TO BE "OFFICIAL" TO BE THE REAL THING, OBVIOUSLY. I MEAN, TAKE YOU AND STRIDER FOR EXAMPLE.
TT: Dave and me?
TT: I'm sorry, please give me a moment. I'm laughing so hard that I'm having trouble breathing.
CG: ROSE, YOU TWO ARE SO DISGUSTINGLY PALE THAT I HAVE SECOND THOUGHTS EVERY TIME I MAKE A MEMO BECAUSE I HAVE TO GAUGE ITS USEFULNESS AGAINST THE PROBABILITY THAT BOTH OF YOU ARE GOING TO SHOW UP.
TT: It's nothing of the sort!
CG: OH MY GOD, YOU ARE SO DENSE.
CG: IT IS *EXACTLY* SOMETHING OF THE SORT. YOU TWO ARE THE DICTIONARY DEFINITION OF THE KIND OF MATERIAL THAT KEEPS A CLADE TOGETHER.
CG: THAT "NOTHING OF THE SORT" YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT IS A HELL OF A LOT MORE STABLE THAN TEMPORARY ALLEGIANCES, OR JUST BEING IN CAHOOTS.
CG: I DON'T CARE WHAT THE HUMAN WORD FOR IT IS, BECAUSE IT PROBABLY SOUNDS LIKE THE SOUND A STRANGLED MEOWBEAST THROATSTEM MAKES. WHICH ABOUT COVERS HOW MUCH IMPORTANCE I PLACE ON IT.
CG: YOU TWO ARE A MATCH MADE IN THE STARS, JOINED IN INSUFFERABLE PALE MATRIMONY, WHATEVER YOU WANT TO CALL IT, ET CETERA, ET CETERA.
TT: If you say so.
TT: What are you getting at, Karkat?
CG: THE *POINT* IS, WE BASICALLY GOT STUCK WITH EACH OTHER, AND SOMEHOW AT THE END OF IT ALL WE MADE IT OUT ALIVE/GOT RESURRECTED AND IT'S MADE US CLOSER IN SOME DEMENTED, SERIOUSLY FUCKED UP WAY.
CG: A SMALLER GROUP LIKE THIS IS ALSO A LOT MORE STABLE THAN A CLADE WITH A LARGER NUMBER OF TROLLS, BECAUSE WITHOUT ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN AT LEAST A MAJORITY OF THEM THERE'S NO WAY TO ENSURE THAT BACKSTABBING AND WIDESPREAD INFIDELITY DON'T OCCUR.
TT: So, essentially, the smaller and more self-contained a clade of trolls is, the more likely they all are to remain a stable and functioning unit?
CG: YEAH. THAT GOES FOR PLACEMENT OFF-PLANET, TOO. THE MORE ESTABLISHED MOIRALLEGIANCES YOU SHUTTLE OFF TOGETHER TO THE SAME PLACE, THE MORE PLACATED AND PACIFIED TROLLS YOU HAVE, AND THE MORE LIKELY YOU ARE NOT TO GET YOUR ASS KILLED, EITHER BECAUSE YOU'RE LESS LIKELY TO RUN OFF AND ACT LIKE A RECKLESS DOUCHESOCKET ON YOUR OWN, OR BECAUSE YOU HAVE A COUPLE OTHERS TO SAVE YOUR ASS IF YOU NEED IT.
TT: Well, thank you, Karkat. This has all been quite informative.
TT: Unfortunately, while I'd like to take your advice, I'm afraid your moratorium on me having second thoughts means I am left with no other choice, and must pursue the cute boy that I met in Culling Law.
CG: OKAY, FUCK IT. THAT'S IT, YOUR CULTURAL EDUCATION PRIVILEGES HAVE BEEN SUSPENDED.
CG: IF YOU'RE DONE ASKING SERIOUS QUESTIONS I'M GOING TO LEAVE. SORT OUT YOUR PINING FOR STRANGER BULGE WITH SOMEONE ELSE.
TT: ;)
CG: YEAH, THE WINK IS MY SIGNAL TO GO.
 
-- calumniedGehenna [CG] ceased trolling telicTheomastix [TT] --

Rose has never considered herself the type to dwell on the concept of friendship, or to partake in many of its trappings and social graces, or to proclaim one of her jejune childhood friendships as "best friends forever" material. But a new realization slowly embeds itself into her as she mulls over the conversation with Karkat: the fifteen trolls she knows, for better or for worse, are there for her for the rest of her life, as she will be for them. Because Karkat's right; they're the closest thing she'll ever have to family, and on this planet, bereft of mothers, of siblings, even of the friendship she once knew, she wants to cling to whatever she can salvage with the name.

That's not even the most surprising part, though, Rose considers as she thinks on it further. It's not until now that she realizes that those closest to her have not necessarily been those who always had been. John and Jade have drifted apart from her, as they have found their respective callings elsewhere; of the four only Dave talks to her with any frequency, anymore. The rest of her friends—those to whom she's close enough to utter more than a word that isn't strictly necessary—are a patchwork of social ties built artificially in the wake of the game: friends she has not exactly chosen to make, but rather her selections out of the limited pool provided.

But as far as that limited selection is concerned, Sollux certainly stands out.

He is a punch in the face on the best of days. When Sollux opens his mouth, Rose can hear the blades rolling off his tongue in waves, like a rack of weapons taught him how to speak. He's not satisfied with anything unless—well, no, that's not quite right, Rose thinks. He's not satisfied with anything; the closest Sollux gets to satisfaction is when he's smug, when he's just won an argument like the argument was the French fucking Revolution and he was its self-appointed Reign of Terror.

Rose is maybe the one person in the universe who can fathom the extent of Sollux, the sheer magnitude of the mind that she's dealing with. He talks like there's a riot of minds competing for attention within him, each one sharper and angrier than the last, and she suspects that if she ever dares to pry deeper than what she can see, she'll find an armoury, or perhaps a medieval torture chamber. For reasons she can't entirely explain, she finds herself trying to undo the padlock he's placed over the whole thing, willfully disregarding the warning flags he's placed—For whose benefit? she wonders idly—indiscriminately across each layer of defense. But every successive STAY OUT only piques her curiosity further, and it's been a long time since anyone has proved as much of a puzzle to Rose as he has.

TA: no, rz.
TA: have you ever played troll 2tarcraft, here let me an2wer your questiion for you, iit doe2n't fuckiing matter becau2e unle22 you are 2crapiing the top of the leaderboard2 ii am liight 2weep2 ahead of you. go back two your 2choolfeediing miiliitary 2trategy level fuckiing zero untiil you can run wiith the biig barkbea2t2.
TA: (the biig barkbea2t on the block ii2 me, btw.)
TT: Of course. How could I have ever thought otherwise? Without the advantage of sweep after sweep of experience sitting in front of the computer and destroying others' imaginary starships within a video game, I fear that I may never mature into a competent tactician.
TT: I suppose you, Virtual Fleet Admiral Captor, have designed a gambit that will allow us to exploit your infinite expertise with video games to topple an empress ruling over a trillion-odd subjects.
TA: yeah iit iinvolve2 niine hundred niinety niine biilliion niine hundred niinety niine miilliion niine hundred niinety niine thou2and niine hundred niinety niine of them beiing frond2trokiing dumba22e2 and me beiing god2 giift two 2tarcraft.
TA: god that'2 a terriible number though.
TT: Indeed. And yet I can't help but notice that God's Gift to Starcraft is sitting here smirking and feeling self-important instead of offering his services to the war effort.
TA: a2 iit turn2 out that'2 an iimportant part two iit, ii'll let you know when ii'm off the clock.
TA: oh hey check iit out it'2 over. now back two my regularly 2cheduled 2elf-loathiing and de2paiir, nothiing el2e two 2ee here.
TA: here'2 the deal lalonde, ii have enough trouble tru2tiing my2elf not two get iin a fight wiith my fuckiing jean2 every tiime ii wake up, why would you thiink ii have all the an2wer2 two the que2tiion of how two 2iinglehandedly briing down fii2hbiitch priime?
TT: Because you're smart.
TT: Come on, let's go over the variables again.

Talking to Sollux is like lighting a slow-burn fuse in her mind in reverse; she starts tense, fusebox at the breaking point, teetering carefully between life and death, between omniscience and oblivion, and it's only once she's heard him speak that anything changes, his lightningrod thoughts lancing from place to place without pausing, without even slowing down. The fuse doesn't peter out, never stops burning, but it's a good flame, Rose thinks, one she can manage on her own for a while, one that drives her to action. At times, she wonders how he doesn't break apart from the inside, like a spaceship in constant re-entry.

It's what he reminds her of, too, more often than not. He's a boy with the heart of a starship and a body like a husk of space debris, of frozen, rigid angles that don't agree or resolve into anything. His mind is a catastrophe of loud discordant reds and blues vying for control, and sometimes, Rose thinks, it's her cool, subdued violet that ends up winning.

An involuntary smile tugs at the edge of her lips at the thought.

Halfway through scripts, Sollux gets the news, and when he does his mind empties itself, in a way it has never done before.

It takes him minutes for the pilot light in his mind to flicker again and muster some sort of emotional reaction; the first he comes up with is disgust. Not at the news itself. It's not particularly surprising—it hardly even counts as news when the outcomes are this predictable. His disgust is directed squarely inward, for somehow managing not to think for more than a split second.

As cognition returns to all the corners of his brain, though, slowly reversing the shock of a hard reboot, it dawns on him what the message is saying, and the bottom of his stomach drops out from absolute dread. Imperial propaganda has its own message, to be sure: taking the helm of a vessel of the Vanguard is an act of extraordinary heroism, a mission undertaken for life by only the most skilled psionics in the galaxy. The movies present the same slick utopia—after all, they're made with the very same Imperial caegars—glamourizing helmsmanship as a position of upward mobility, a way for skilled young lowbloods to rub elbows with royalty and make names for themselves. On paper, it's the best job an ambitious, intelligent troll like Sollux could have.

But for every glossy insert in the gaming magazines featuring a stylishly dressed pilot seated comfortably before a command screen, there's a rumour of a far darker reality shared by sympathizers, dissidents, anarchists, and rabblerousers on the seedier corners of the internet. That helmsmen are little more than living batteries strung up in a room by a lattice of wires, hooked up to brains in vats and unfathomably powerful processors. That they are wracked with constant pain and disease, driven mad by isolation, and die inevitably in squalor, eventually succumbing to a combination of dystrophy, dementia, and sepsis.

So when he receives a message containing the Empire's profuse congratulations at being rewarded a "prestigious, competitive position," he feels justified at balking. Of course, there's no such thing as an "offer" when the Empire's concerned. Sollux finally reads the messages—what other choice does he have?—and he knows there are only two options left: he can die now, quickly, or later, slowly.

It is with his friends in mind that he shows up for helmsmanship scripts, dressed in the priciest flight suit he can afford. If he's going to go down, Sollux figures, at least he'll go down in a spectacular fireball, working from the inside to his dying breath.

When the first several weeks pass and he hasn't been turned into the mobile energy husk he expected he'd be by now, he begins to wonder if maybe the online reports hadn't been just a little bit exaggerated for effect. After all, if they had undergone such extreme anguish and torture, how would they have even uploaded their testimonials online?

But Sollux isn't an idiot either. He can tell a dirty scheme when he sees one, and all of the Empire's careful sloganeering and optics is only ever really enough to rouse a hope inside him he already knows is false. It's only a matter of time before the single jack installed in his nervous system begins to multiply across his body, earning a nice pair of auxiliaries, a mediport, an NG tube, and most likely a constellation of IV lines all over his arms and legs. It's a gruesome way to go, but at least it'll buy him some time.

He doesn't tell anyone about the ticking clock—he figures there's no point beyond earning some twisted, undeserved pity—so it leaves him feeling kind of like he's a wiggler somebody left on an outcropping just waiting until the native wildlife mercy-kills and eats him. The entire situation feels so appropriately Alternian, he thinks, but he's never been one to leave well enough alone, no matter how fitting or poetic it might be. Sollux is a nuclear engine that runs on dissatisfaction and vents complacency as exhaust, and besides, poetry is for assholes.

Of course, it has never computed to him that someone might care about him enough to try to do something about it. It's never even computed to him that someone might care, full stop. When Rose looks at him she sees a study in angry, aggressive apathy, and when she finally learns of the secret he's been nursing for as long as he's been in schoolfeeding, she begins to understand why.

Only an Alternian educational system can cut itself as brutally short as it does. The turnover between final examination and assignment off-planet is a mere twelve nights, a product of the Empire's highly efficient sorting heuristics. Some time ago, Rose learns during an after-school study session with her History of the Hemocaste professor, the Empire did away with most of its schoolfeeders, finding it much more convenient and economical instead to daisy-chain enslaved psionics unfit for the stresses of an interstellar engine room to computers in order to mark the performance of all of the recruits. The act of tremendous economy reduced the budget of the Ministry of Education and Conscription by half in one fell swoop, and cut the time necessary to assign all graduates to positions by an order of ten; the drones had a field day culling the newly-superfluous graders.

The twelve nights that remain are each given a name, and since creativity is frequently left wanting among Alternian minds, they are arranged with the names of blood castes in ascending order, from maroon to fuchsia. Tradition dictates that assignments are parcelled out according to prestige; on the first two days grunt work and clerical positions are filled, rounding out the bureaucracy with its necessary underclass. The process continues until fuschia day, reserved only for posts of the utmost prestige. The arrangement leads to an atmosphere of escalating tension as the colours progress, since each passing day increases the likelihood either that one is in line for a prestigious position, or that one is slated for a visit by the drones on the thirteeth day, scarlet day, where the mutants, misfits and invalids meet their final fates.

Jade day turns to teal languidly, sun clinging to life on the horizon even as the twin moons loom large in the sky. The warmer clime of the dim season encourages lazy evenings in the recuperacoons, quiet nights spent making farewells to friends going elsewhere. It's a strange time on Alternia, uncharacteristically peaceful—after all, nobody wants to risk getting killed just days before their shipment offworld—but with an undercurrent of its ever-present paranoia thrumming just under the surface. Rose can't help but worry for her friends who haven't yet heard (though she counts herself among that number, a curious pride bids her ignore that fact); first among that list is Sollux.

Still no news, hm?
what kiind of que2tiion ii2 that, fuckiing rude, of cour2e not. they're waiitiing two crown me fii2h priince22, diid you thiink ii would be learniing back on bronze that ii'd been piicked two be bulgefondler number eiight for 2ome no name coloniial governor?
what'2 your excu2e for not gettiing your a22iignment yet, anyway?
Ah, you hadn't heard?
I've been handpicked for the position of "Imperial smartass".
What a shame. It appears we've both usurped the title rightfully belonging to the other.
But I'll make it work somehow.
well lii2ten, ii'll make a one tiime deal two you, you 2eem liike you're a perfect fiit for miine, thiink you could ju2t giive up beiing fii2h priince22 and let me have a try?
I admit, I'm somewhat taken at the idea of you representing yourself to the world as a seadwelling sovereign, replete with a shamelessly lurid violet gown and tiara.
But I'm afraid I must decline, for fear of the widespread anarchy that might result from an amorous crowd being subjected to the breathtaking image of you poured into a dress.
wow lalonde, you really know how two treat a troll riight, next tiime you'll be compliimentiing me on my 2tunniing curve2.
I've heard the Starcraft Body is in these days.
that'2 more liike iit, ii wa2 worriied for a moment you'd been abducted by aliien2 and replaced by a 2hiitty knockoff ro2e who wa2 actually NIICE two people.
thank god that niightmare ii2 over.
Oh my, I wasn't aware that you were aching for me to continue my ritual debasement of you for your own pleasure.

Sollux stares at her for a moment, face arranged into an expression Rose can't quite decode, somewhere between dumbfounded and refreshed, and a short bemused chuckle escapes him like life-support leaking into a vacuum. She returns the favour—even she cannot mask the sly grin that graces her expression. He wonders when he fell so hard for that smile; probably around the time he decided she could join the ranks of the mythical cohort of members of the Not A Frondstroking Dumbass Club—population heretofore: Sollux Captor—despite all he'd said to the contrary. The idea grows on him that this is the only way he knows how to pity: in the slow, creeping realizations he makes that the people he cares about are not complete idiots, and the sudden, torturous revelation that he so, so is.

And then, because he decides the world can only ever allow one member at a time into the Not A Frondstroking Dumbass Club, he kisses her on the mouth.

To his surprise, it doesn't end with her gripping him by the shoulders and prying him off her. Instead, her hands come to rest on his back in a way that he could almost describe as gentle if it weren't so damn strong. He cannot fucking believe himself, getting himself involved with another fish troll, because all that ever comes out of it is that he gets manhandled every time he gets the bright idea to make a move. But it's not bad; for reasons beyond his comprehension she isn't repelled entirely by his Starcraft body, and it's enough to make him forget for a moment that his clock's run out, and that when this is over he's going to have to march back to his hive and prepare to have his nervous system flayed to ribbons and his body turned into some haughty freak's personal power source.

But then their lips part, and the moment is over. Sollux can't keep her in the dark about this anymore, he knows, so he spills it out, so someone can know where he's going, what his ultimate fate will be.

ii'm heariing today, lalonde.
Feeling lucky, are we?
no, iit'2...
fuck. ii'm 2uch an IIDIIOT, why am ii doiing thii2 two you, why am ii doiing thii2 two anyone. ii 2hould have 2een thii2 COMIING, clearly the uniiver2e ha2 deciided my fuckup2 are two know no bound2.
ii 2wear two god, the expan2iionary theory of the uniiver2e had two be iinvented two accommodate for the ma22iiive clu2terfuck iin the centre known a2 "2OLLUX'2 GRAVIITATIIONAL WELL OF 2TUPIIDIITY".
well, now everyone ii know and have ever cared about ii2 about two get 2ucked iin by iit2 event horiizon.
Sollux, what's wrong?

Her face is already wracked with concern, some tiny relic of her human emotions showing through the corners of the mask. It certainly doesn't help matters for Sollux, as he struggles to verbalize how, in fact, everything is wrong, so unfathomably wrong that he's not even sure what right would look like.

you know about helm2men riight.
Some. They're covered in cursory manner in History of the Hemocaste as the psionic trolls behind Alternia's faster-than-light engines, but I do suspect that their portrayal as liberated jet-setters probably isn't the whole truth.
I'm guessing that's the role for which you're being selected, given the context. But if I'm to take this as unfortunate news, you clearly have information that I'm missing.
let'2 put iit thii2 way, iimperiial propaganda goe2 out of iit2 way two make iit 2ound liike a 2weet deal, but word get2 around, you know?
a braiinjacked guy ju2t need2 two 2piit out a few word2 two hii2 good buddy mechaniic wiith a 2oft 2pot, and then that guy get2 rea22iigned two a miiliitary po2t on alterniia, and then he let2 2ome wiiggler wiith a liine two twochan iin on the 2ecret, and pretty 2oon every goldblood wiith half a 2ponge ha2 heard the rumours.
So that image is entirely fictional?
ii really don't know, ro2e.
but ii do know better than two giive her iimperiiou2 fii2hbiitch the benefiit of the doubt.
Isn't there anything else we can do? We could hide you, protect you...
yeah, 2ure, that'2 ju2t what ii want. ii'll run away, and maybe make iit three equiinoxe2 before the empiire fiind2 me.
and they wiill fiind me, ju2t liike they'd fiind you for hiidiing me two, and then they'd cull u2 both.
we'd both wiin troll darwiin award2, iit would be completely embarra22iing.
you know we're 2marter than that.
So that's it, then? You'll be enslaved in the duty of helmsmanship and there's nothing we can do about it?
And our resistance? Our revolution? You're the one who's protected us from the Empire's prying eyes, the one who's steered discussion of logistics.
We can't afford to lose you, Sollux. Please, there has to be something. There has to be another way.

Sollux has never seen her plead, but the normal, cool-headed Rose Lalonde has vanished in the face of the news he's dropped onto her, and he feels like shit all over again for hiding it from her for this long. He wishes now he'd had the courage to come forward with it sooner; maybe they could have planned around him, so his departure wouldn't be fucking up everyone's plans so much. All he can do now is offer them what he has, and hope they'll be better off without his bullshit holding them back.

nah, ro2e. there never wa2 another way.

There's no use dwelling on it. He changes the subject.

ii'll talk two 2triider and kk about keepiing the 2ecure connectiion runniing. iif they manage two keep theiir bulge2 out of theiir own wa2te chute2 they 2hould be able two keep our 2ediitiiou2 communiication2 from gettiing u2 all culled.
and lalonde?
Yeah?
thank2.

He doesn't wait for an answer, just walks away, and for a second Rose swears she can see a smug grin flash across his face. Sometimes she wonders about Sollux, how he's even real, how the universe put together this riot of contradictions and gave him a name, and how he managed to make it this far without collapsing in on himself. A part of her hopes, despite what she knows, that he'll use some deus ex machina to worm his way out of it all, but she's seen the endings to too many stories on Alternia to let her believe anything else. Her face hardens, and in her heart Rose prepares for war.

The first call she makes is to Dave.

Chapter Text

"They who fight with monsters should look to it that they themselves do not become monsters. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you."

—St. Tejlor the Swift, theologorer and dissident (later executed), from Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146, quoted in The Testament, or the Gospel of Meulin, the Disciple

More than the sweet rack on his skull or the alien headtrips it's the memories he has from going to scripts that weigh heavily on his mind, these days. The brain fits, the dark things that lurk in his peripheral vision, the nagging mirage of a gut wound slowly phasing him from consciousness—those he can will away by turning up the volume, laying a record down onto his beat-up turntables, and mixing down the foreign sounds of Alternian music into something approaching what he used to listen to. But the things he has done at scripts have compressed him into a coiled spring, an uneasy mirror image of who he knows (thinks?) he really is.

He's not like Rose. She learns to stop hating herself for killing others after the first few attempts on her life, learns to stop counting after the first few dozen, and after the first few hundred it's hard for her not to develop a sense of twisted pride in executing a technically clean kill. That's what happens to perfectionists on Alternia, he figures. It's the reason why Terezi is pacing back and forth in Dave's hivesuite halfway through indigo day muttering to herself instead of packing her things for the job she has to know she's going to get, or maybe scheming how to off somebody else and take their assignment, if she's really so anxious. There isn't a whole lot he can say when she gets this way, beyond what should already be painfully obvious to her.

i swear to god you have nothing to worry about
the only reason it has taken this long is because youre going to get the call on fuchsia being all like
hey terezi pyrope how would you like to be god-emperor of all of the lawyer chicks in the entire universe
yeah no its no pressure just let us know by monday well get you a sweet corner office where you can boss around a bunch of lowbloods
did you know its an occupational perk that you probably get to steal their cheerios and their disgusting oily coffee pods
only downside is you have to put up with their shit and listen to them ramble about how youre like an ace assaultorney main character
rez i wouldnt be telling you to brace for good news if i didnt think it was coming
im like your buddy if i thought they were shafting you i would tell you to take out your sword and get ready for some kill bill shit because ive got your back
TH4T 1S 34SY FOR YOU TO S4Y, D4V3!
YOU H4V3 4LR34DY B33N G1V3N YOUR 4SS1GNM3NT, H4V3NT YOU
yeah sure i heard back on gold
but thats because the empire thinks of me as a glorified gapercloth
im telling you youve been waiting because you are getting promoted to the front of the line
they wouldnt waste someone who knows their shit like you do
TH3Y DO TH4T 4LL TH3 T1M3
TH3 3MP1R3 1S FULL OF W4NN4B3 L3G1SL4C3R4TORS! CULL1NG 4 F3W JUST M4K3S COMP3T1T1ON B3TT3R, WH1CH M4K3S 3V3RYON3 B3TT3R 4T TH31R JOB
well no im pretty sure it just makes everyone shit their pants
444UGH
YOUR3 M1SS1NG TH3 PO1NT
B3S1D3S, TH4T 1S NOT WH4T 1S ON MY M1ND R1GHT NOW
bullshit
1 4SSUR3 YOU, 4S 4MUS1NG 4S TH3 POOP1NG H4B1TS OF M4MM4L14N L1V3STOCK 4R3, 1M NOT WORR13D 4BOUT MY JOB
1TS SOM3BODY 3LS3 TH4T H4S M3 CONC3RN3D

Terezi screws her face up into an anxious frown, and suddenly Dave feels like the biggest idiot in all of paradox space. This whole time, he hasn't even considered what was right in front of him this entire time.

its captor isnt it
Y34H
1 GU3SS YOU H34RD 4BOUT WH3R3 H3S GO1NG
i heard hes shipping out today
i guess they send them out early so they dont try to ditch
he told me hes getting back seat in a spaceship until theyve brainfucked him enough that they trust him to solo pilot
like i cant even joke about that shit it sounds fucking awful
you guys are close huh
W3 4R3
W3R3?
1 DONT KNOW 1F 1LL 3V3R S33 H1M 4G41N
OR WH3TH3R H3LL 3V3N B3 4L1V3 1N TH3R3, WH3TH3R WH4TS L3FT W1LL 3V3N B3 SOLLUX 4NYMOR3

Dave doesn't have an answer to that. There isn't an answer that would satisfy her, or him, for that matter; everything he tries to come up with seems to be tied to a titanic weight anchored within him, arresting anything that springs to mind. But the silence does its work for him, and his glance at her and her disaffected nod are all they need to understand each other. They do that a lot these days, he thinks. They understand each other. Before, in the dimly-recalled histories they once called their own, they would behold each other with baffled wonderment. Terezi was foreign to him, an utterly bewildering collection of alien pop culture and alien morality and alien emotion, the kind that never translates perfectly. The mystery and the fascination has evaporated with time, leaving only a kind of sad acceptance, that this is the only way things can be. With him and her, and with Sollux.

yeah

Dave collapses back onto the well-worn couch in his livingblock, consciously disregarding the learned mechanical diligence instilled in him by sweeps of conditioning. He keeps his head level, but his gaze drifts back to Terezi, who has joined him on the couch. She huffs with what can only be the emotional exhaustion that comes from the relentless exposure to brutality—Dave's heard it from Rose so often that he can identify it automatically—and he knows it never could have been like this. Not before.

It occurs to him in the moment that, perhaps for the first time, they are the same. Not because they're both alien child soldiers, he thinks, though he snorts humourlessly at entertaining the thought briefly, but because they know what the Empire could be, and they know how far away it is from that elusive ideal. The Sufferer's sermons—words Dave's long since memorized not because of their quality (he's kind of a shitty motivational speaker, Dave thinks, with sprawling tangents that always amount to the same message) but because of the number of times he's been privy to them—resound in his mind now and it's not until now, when he stops to think about it, that he realizes how humanizing they are. There's a special irony to it—that he has never been so human than he is now, having weathered almost six years (the word feels strange to turn over in his mind, after so long without it) under the thumb of the Alternian Empire, and that Terezi is right there with him.

The thought revitalizes his hope. It's been wanting lately, too; his closest friends have been reeling since teal day, trying to come to terms with losing Sollux to helmsmanship, but even the seasons before them have worn everyone down. People he would never have figured to lend an ear or a hand to the cause, like Eridan and Vriska, act more sympathetic than they've ever been to the idea of a regime change.

There's an absurdity to it, that these trolls have condemned themselves needlessly to what they all know, deep down, is an inevitable death for their treachery, just because they met a handful of charismatic aliens who tagged along for a ride back to their homeworld. Dave saves the laugh for later at the thought. He doesn't want to explain himself to Terezi, though he suspects she'd derive humour from it too, at this point; it's satisfying enough for him to sit in silence beside her, their understanding the only communication necessary.

Terezi hears back first thing in the evening on violet day. It is a personal victory; her friendly rivalry with Rose had extended to the prestige of their assignments. Rose must content herself with indigo, and Dave smiles when she informs him that she'll devise some scheme to take the upper hand again.

Dave can almost fool himself into thinking fuchsia's last rays are gentle, from the pleasant warmth that seeps through the cracks in his window, but the light behind the curtains is harsh. Twilight defines the planet, in many ways; beautiful and terrible, and looking at it too hard will kill you. He considers the comparison, and deems it fair. It fits the planet, fits his friends too—Rose and Terezi come to mind immediately—and, more problematically, fits the reigning sovereign.

It's quiet now. Karkat’s latest memo has few updates; half of their cohort have already said their goodbyes, and are outbound on this evening's vessels, the first to set out into Alternia's greater galactic empire. Those that remain are preparing themselves for the same thing, packing their belongings, releasing their lusii, and mentally readying for the journey ahead.

CCG: RIGHT, YEAH, DON'T GET YOURSELF KILLED, INSERT OTHER SICKENINGLY OBVIOUS AND SEMANTICALLY EMPTY ADVICE.
CCG: GO CATCH YOUR SHUTTLE.
CGG: yeah duh :p
CGG: ok youre right i really have to go now
CGG: but you better stay in touch!!
CGG: bye karkat!!! <3
CGG ceased responding to memo.
CAT: tAKE IT EASY ON YOURSELF,
CAT: kARKAT,
CAT ceased responding to memo.
CCG has become an idle troll!
CURRENT tephroticGladius [CTG] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CTG: uh
CTG: whoa
CTG: ok its been pretty quiet in here for the last couple hours but i feel like theres kind of an elephant in the room here that needs addressing
CTG: sup tuskbeast how you doin
CTG: fine hbu
CTG: eh not much just packing up my shit and kicking brocrow out the door you know the usual rites of passage whats new on your end
CTG: oh yeah i kinda have this problem where im stuck in this tiny shitty ass room despite me being fucking enormous
CCG: STRIDER, WHAT IN GOD'S ASSCHAFING SOILED GARTERS ARE YOU DOING.
CTG: oh hey karkat
CTG: say hi to the tuskbeast
CCG: PLEASE, EDUCATE ME, WHERE IS THIS TUSKBEAST.
CCG: SHIT, DON'T TELL ME THAT YOU'RE LIKE TAVROS NOW, HAVE YOU STARTED COMMUNING WITH ANIMALS??
CCG: FUCKING CULL ME NOW.
CTG: no dude im talking about the fact that you decided today was a great day to gank aradias colour scheme
CCG: OH. THAT?
CCG: THAT'S JUST INSURANCE. I STOLE SOME DEAD ASSHOLE'S IDENTITY A WHILE AGO SO THAT I WOULDN'T BE LEFT HOLDING THE BAG ON SCARLET DAY AND GET MYSELF CULLED LIKE THE HEINOUS, UNWORTHY MUTANT THAT I AM.
CCG: I'M JUST SETTING THE STORY STRAIGHT TO AVOID ANY QUESTIONS.
CTG: oh
CTG: yeah i guess that makes sense
CTG: still not sure why you didnt just go whole hog and jack some highbloods name
CTG: get yourself a cushy post ordering people around to their deaths
CTG: id go for that sounds kind of like a sweet deal
CCG: YEAH, THAT SOUNDS LIKE THE KIND OF THING THAT WILL ALLOW ME TO FLY UNDER THE RADAR!
CCG: I MIGHT AS WELL JUST CULL MYSELF NOW IF I DID THAT, I MEAN JESUS DAVE, HAVE YOU NEVER HEARD OF PURITY TESTS?
CTG: shit i didnt realize you had to be a virgin to be a highblood
CTG: wow ok remind me to make fun of lalonde later for that
CURRENT telicTheomastix [CTT] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CTT: I'm right here, you know.
CTG: hi rose hows the nunnery
CTT: I don't know, Dave. Why don't you tell me? You're the holy man among us.
CCG: NO, BULGELOBE, I'M TALKING ABOUT THE ROUTINE BLOOD SAMPLES THEY TAKE IN ANY JOB WORTH HOLDING TO MAKE SURE THE RABBLE DON'T GET ANY IDEAS ABOVE THEIR STATION.
CTG: so wont they catch you for purity tests anyway no matter what blood you pretend to have
CCG: NO, BECAUSE NOBODY *WANTS* TO BE A RUSTBLOOD.
CTG: im hurt
CCG: IT SUCKS TO BE YOU.
CTT: Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but won't you run into a certain amount of difficulty with your eye colour?
CTT: Whether yours has come in completely or not, I can't imagine that's a charade you can continue forever without more extensive disguising.
CCG: ONE STEP AHEAD OF YOU THERE.
CCG: EQUIUS, YOU STILL THERE?
CURRENT cavalierTurncoat [CCT] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CCT: D --> Yes
CCT: D --> I've completed the coloured contact lenses you requested
CCT: D --> They should be arriving in the mail tonight
CCT: D --> Now, if you'll excuse me, I must also prepare to depart
CCG: THANKS, ZAHHAK.
CCT ceased responding to memo.
CCG: ANYWAY, THAT SHOULD KEEP ME SAFE ON THAT FRONT.
CURRENT coronalClaimant [CCC] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
CCC: )(----EY.
CCG: UH, HI FEFERI. WE HAVEN'T HEARD FROM YOU IN A WHILE.
CCG: KIND OF WEIRD TIME TO JOIN US IN THE MEMO, SINCE ABOUT HALF OF US ARE ALREADY GONE, BUT WHATEVER, I'M NOT COMPLAINING OR ANYTHING.
CCG: WHAT'S GOING ON WITH YOU?
CCC: Saury to interrupt, but...
CCC: We )(ave a PRAWNBL------EM.
CCG: RIGHT. GREAT. DO YOU THINK YOU CAN TELL US WHAT IT IS WITHOUT RESORTING TO FISH PUNS?
CCC: Sorry again!
CCC: I'm just so N-ERVOUS, t)(ey always start bubbling up w)(en I'm like t)(is.
CCC: Glub glub.
CCG: OKAY, JUST...
CCG: SPIT IT OUT, WHAT'S THE DEAL.
CCC: I just received a message from t)(e -EMPR-ESS.
CCG: A MESSAGE? WHAT DOES THE EMPRESS HAVE TO SAY TO YOU?
CCG: "I DISLIKE YOU, PLEASE LET ME CULL YOU AND MILL YOU UP FOR GRUBSAUCE"?
CCC: T)(at's not too far off, acs)(oally.
CCC: S)(e's issued me a c)(allenge to DU-EL FOR T)(-E T)(RON----E.

The moment Rose plunges under the surface of the ocean, she enters another world. The crash of high tide's waves breaking into perfect curls vanishes, replaced with a rhythmic, muted roar that she finds almost soothing. Gone, too, are the land's pink- and green-tinged greys; here, her surroundings are steeped in deep blues and violets, and shrouded in a darkness that goes beyond what she can see and into another realm, another dimension altogether. As she descends further, the edges of her vision warp with a colour almost blacker than she can conceive; she is plumbing the depths of an ocean she can scarcely believe in, and it is only moving further and further out of her realm of understanding.

Fear hangs around her like a pall. This is untrodden ground for her still; though she has braved diving underwater in her bathtub, to be submerged in the open ocean is something entirely different. Her gills flare, prickling with salt-water tang and allowing a rush of water to replace the air in her mouth. It's nothing like breathing; Rose has to convince herself, despite the panicked feeling of her throat closing up and her mouth filling with water, that she isn't drowning, merely sinking deeper into a parallel universe that is hers all the same. And it is hers, it has always been hers; it has merely been waiting for the moment to reveal itself to her.

Her vision swims, she thinks—or perhaps that's a sea creature's titanic body shifting in and out of view?—and she blinks, trying to regain her sense of direction and a better look at whatever haunts her peripheral vision. She wants to be circumspect, but when everything fills her gut with a rising dread welling up from somewhere deep and primal within her, she finds it difficult to respond adequately to everything she's seeing and the even greater number she isn't. Before long, she hears the muted swish of something approaching behind her, and reflexively she whips around to assess the potential danger—only it's no danger at all, it's just Feferi Peixes, showing up for the meeting she requested Rose attend. With a sigh of relief she addresses Feferi.

Feferi.

Rose hacks her name up, and almost lets a mouthful of water into her lungs. Consciously shutting her throat and letting the water glide into her mouth and through her gills, she marshals her vocal cords into obeying her, and speaks again. She sounds like a distressed whale and a chorus of dying cats all at once.

You caught me by surprise.
Sorry! It can be kind of )(ard to see and get around down )(ere if you aren't used to it.
It's certainly not an environment I'm familiar with, though I suppose it's just as natural a habitat for me as land.
Yea)(, you bet it is!
I wis)( you'd come down )(ere B–EFOR–E, but I'm s)(ore you'll like it now t)(at you're )(ere.
That may be so! I must say, that said, I think it'll take a while yet before I can accustom myself to speaking down here.
Oh, t)(at's not)(ing to worry aboat eit)(er! Your gills will get used to t)(e c)(ange in environment before too long, and it'll feel just as natural as being above the surface.
So tell me, Feferi. I'm happy to accompany you to the fissure and convene with your lusus, but you never did explain exactly why my presence was necessary.
Don't be silly!
Rose, you being )(ere is the w)(ole glubbing POINT.
Gl'bgolyb )(as asked for you specifis)(cally. I offered to carry along a message to you, but s)(e was insistent t)(at s)(e wanted to meet you in P–ERSON!
So. )(ere you are.
Here I am.

All of a sudden, Rose feels very small, and it doesn't even begin to compare to when she finally comes face to face with the maw of the beast itself.

As long as Rose has been on Alternia, she has certainly noticed that her strength has undergone a major upgrade. From teenaged girl to fish princess, there is a notable distinction, and it would have been impossible for her not to notice; overnight, burdensome loads become feathers, and moving physical obstacles becomes a question of when, not of if. The power in her sinews is intoxicating as it has ever been, and it only grows with time. At nine sweeps, she has shucked away that first pupation and left it far behind, replacing the childish, awkward obliquity of a human teenager with the angular, fine-boned physique of a predator. Everything about her is a razorblade: her fingernails, tough and keratinous, each carry a cutting edge. So do her horns, towering with splendour like a crown above her nest of black hair, and so, too, do the two pairs of canines which extend menacingly from her gums, coming to a point where they rest above her bottom lip. And this is the least of it: her mind only expands further with age, and her tongue sharpens in lockstep, spilling out a darker, richer voice unrecognizable to any thirteen-year-old Rose caring to listen, but one which feels all too natural for nine-sweep-old Rozaya to wield like the weapon it is.

The feeling of being on the apex of everything—a position that now feels like second nature to her—vanishes upon witnessing the dread Emissary of the Furthest Ring. Gl'bgolyb extends for miles, Rose is sure of it; the mouth itself could engulf a pod of whales effortlessly, and the tentacles begin thicker than tree trunks, extending in all directions, both towards the dim skylight and deeper into the dizzying rift that houses the gnarled bramble of tendrils. All of the confidence and the strength she has built up since starting fresh on the surface of his planet leaches away, and Rose can only watch in muted awe, bobbing up and down with the strangely gentle current, as the great beast begins to whisper.

Seer.

She begins simply, making herself and her intended target of conversation known. The primal rumble of the alien syllables reverberates in Rose's chest, filling her with a spreading glacial terror. Feferi looks very excited.

You recall the terms of Our contract, as laid out by your soul's binding to servitude of Our aims.

It takes Rose a few minutes to even begin to decode the monster's ancient tongue, its almost inaudible depth twisting her guts into knots, turning them all in on each other until she feels like all of her is inside out.

I do.
We call on you now, Seer, because it is time We reveal Our aims in full to you. The regent has disappointed Us, scorned Us in favour of personal aims, scouring the reachest of furthest space in conquest instead of keeping an ear to Our requests. We would like for you to effect such change. Our Princess is here to aid and abet your cause, but the responsibility shall fall to you to ensure the passing of the Great Queen.

The beast issues her the first confirmation that Rose receives that the ominous visions that Dave and Aradia have carried with them are not just mad ramblings but a prompt and a syllabus for their future. It all makes sense when she pieces together the circumstantial evidence, the revolution referred to thus far with kid gloves and discussed only in the hushed tones of private messages. And she is its centrepiece: the angel of death with the instruments of death in her hands, with the demon horns and the teeth like daggers and looking like a monster from a dated movie is the least of it, now.

Now, the true gravity of it all begins to set in, and a creeping horror wells up from deep inside of her as she considers what it means. The power that just minutes ago served as a source of pride now acts as an icon of betrayal; after all, the promise of her servitude had been one thing. But now, everything about her life has been rendered a cosmic prologue, a tragic backstory to her True Purpose, and the worst part is that she knows it. Rose gives one of those little laughs, the kind that people make when something is so unbelievably not funny that there's something funny about the very fact. She looks back at Gl'bgolyb, eyes no longer reverent with wonder but with a kind of disbelieving shock that this was what they wanted all along. I'm not your errand-girl, she wants to say, but then she realizes that it is exactly what she is, and it shuts her up all over again. Her face goes blank, and in the tongue that only she, the beast, and Feferi share, she answers:

Your will shall be done.

Feferi nods too, like she's part of the monster—perhaps she is, Rose considers, and she feels like something of an idiot for not having entertained the thought sooner—and the meeting is over. Its giant jaws close again, and its last whispers escape in tiny bubbles of air that float slowly towards the surface. Rose turns to Feferi, eyes wild with disorientation, and she has only one question.

Now what?
Now we wait.
And what are we waiting for, precisely?
I'm staying )(ere, wit)( my lusus.
YOU are going to take your s)(uttle tomorrow, and rise in t)(e ranks of t)(e Imperial Fleet. And w)(en you are ready, you're going to come back wit)( your army, and wit)( everyone else, and take on the Empress.

It's nothing short of a command, as if it had come from the mouth of the Emissary of the Noble Circle rather than another girl her age. Rose understands now, understands the binding contract between Feferi and them like she does the pact she herself has made with them. And she feels—perhaps not good, but like she can do this, like what has remained infuriatingly nebulous and intangible up until now has cleared up into something resolving into a picture she can fathom. She still doesn't know how she's going to topple the regent of an interstellar empire, but she knows now, at the very least, that she must. She has time to lay down the groundwork, but she knows that if she is going to accomplish the herculean task, she will have to begin today. She doesn't have Sollux to help her, not anymore; Rose will have to undertake it alone.

Rose is accustomed to being alone, by now.

She swims away from Feferi, toward the light. and her life begins anew.

Chapter Text

" Adventures befall the unadventurous as readily, if not as frequently, as the bold. Adventures are a logical and reliable result—and have been since at least the time of Venturer Odysseus—of the fatal act of leaving one's hive, or trying to return to it again. All adventures happen in that damned and magical space, wherever it may be found or chanced upon, which least resembles one's hive."

—Harson Fforde, authorturer (later executed), from Gentletrolls of the Road

For a culture so uninterested in style, Rose thinks, Alternian society is incredibly invested in appearances. She can hardly believe it, at first, when the drone delivers her uniform a few hours before her scheduled departure and instructs her in its harsh, alien tongue to arrive in full dress blacks for her military induction and subsequent stationing. Her assignment is to the capital ship Tarqin, a lumbering Annihilator-class titan named, as far as Rose can tell, after a hero and serial murderer of the early Alternian Empire. She learns later that this happens to be a recurring pattern among the commissioned ships of the armed forces.

The uniform itself is a sort of grab-bag of haphazardly assembled pieces, with a skintight, full-body jumpsuit overlaid by knee-high black boots and a smart, form-fitting black overcoat trimmed first with the violet of her caste, then with the olive hue of a mid-level officer. A few unfamiliar symbols are embroidered in the top-right corner of her jacket, and the top-left features her now-familiar symbol rendered in violet on an embroidered patch. After regarding the outfit for a moment, she shrugs and begins to dress herself in it, before appraising herself in the mirror. Not bad, Rose, she remarks to herself quietly, hand brushing the folds and wrinkles out of one sleeve before pulling it taut, and she feels a creeping sense of pride seeing herself in the uniform before she shakes her head violently, remembering what she's here to do. Not to serve at the Empire's leisure, as she has heard every evening at schoolfeeding, the rote repetition of the Alternian Creed worming its way uncomfortably deep into her subconscious, but to protect her friends—to put an end to the tyranny that would treat her moirail (her brother, damn it, she corrects herself with another shake of her head, eyes screwing shut) as cannon fodder but would hold her in almost unparallelled esteem.

She holds that thought, forces herself to remember it, as she packs away what remains of her belongings into her sylladex. A few mediocre romance novels and some tomes of glorified propaganda are all that constitute the Alternian publishing industry, but it's better than nothing, so she brings her books along, along with a few of the less-morbid art pieces she has littered around the hive. Though it's mostly unchanged from her childhood home, she can't will herself to feel any sort of nostalgia for the place, and even the farewell she makes to her lusus, the rarely-present Zazzerpan, is done more out of a feeling of obligation than out of attachment.

When she finally steps out the door, she doesn't look back at what she's leaving behind. Crossing the threshold is simply a formality, at this point; it's been sweeps since there has been nothing really left to look back to. So she looks forward, eyes locked on the only goal that matters to her, and the only goal that she has left.

Rose doesn't really listen to the woman on the makeshift rostrum, introduced with an almost preposterously long title—Menora Tollya, styled Captain-General of the Will of the Popular Imperial Vanguard—though part of her feels she ought to do so. Speaking to the vast crowd of military inductees, the Captain-General drones on about the importance of adherence to the chain of command, about the value of contribution to the military effort of the Empress's supreme popular vanguard, and about the glory that their inevitable successes will bring not only to the Empire, but to the race of trollkind as a whole. It doesn't take long for Rose to recognize that this woman is, in fact, an empty suit, likely chosen by the Empire for her doctrinaire stance and her congenital inability to inspire.

A few times, she has to blink vigorously and pinch herself to wake herself back up again; the Captain-General's speaking has long since looped back over onto itself, and Rose suspects the boredom elicited by the frequent repetition is at least part of its purpose, beyond the contents of the address. She gives a knowing glance from her position back at Terezi, a few sections back, who gives a disaffected sniff of commiseration in reply. Dave and Karkat are too far back to pick out from the crowd, but she knows they feel the same way; it's grueling for her, so it can only be worse for them, for whom even the empty promises of the Empire share no concern, and which make no secret of their disposability in the eyes of the military.

After a seeming eternity, Tollya shuts her mouth, and a chant erupts from the audience with an eerie unison. Glory to the Empire, chant all of the mouths around her, their tone infectious but almost divorced of any genuine emotion that Rose can detect. It's a sort of distributed hysteria that seems so parasitically entrenched in her that she wonders if she isn't chanting it too, without realizing it. The moments slow to a crawl, and for a while Rose wonders if the shouts will ever die down. But they do, eventually, and people seem to snap out of their altered states quickly when another woman on stage announces that general boarding is to begin for assignments to the Tarqin.

As it turns out, shuttling vast quantities of trolls into space is not easy, but it's easier than trying to land a monstrous capital ship somewhere on the surface of Alternia, so the large groups of trolls line up by an array of thin, sleek ferries—Rose is reminded briefly of school buses, and her mind bends at the thought of something (anything) from Earth—that are poised to provide them the voyage off-planet and the rendezvous with the capital ship. The inside more closely resembles an airliner, with its rows of seats and relative lack of amenities, and right down to the dispassionate voice informing them of the two-hour-long travel time until docking at their destination.

Rose looks at the seat-back pocket. They even have Sky Mall.

Being in space is surprisingly mundane, apart from the microgravity—though she's strapped into the seat, her arms hover effortlessly, and the small packaged drink provided to her floats in place right in front of her. She briefly considers contacting Dave, but figures that with assignment to the very same ship they'll see each other before too long. For now, she returns her focus to the vagaries of Troll Sky Mall—they still claim to have the most comfortable bathrobes in the universe—and waits for docking.

It's a quick few hours. The Tarqin comes into view with a galling inelegance, the brute grey slab coming into view from the port-side windows, quickly spreading almost interminably in every direction as the small ferries approach and begin to dock. There is little to see from this perspective, the surface a featureless enigma providing no clue as to what might lie inside.

It makes Rose all the more unprepared for what she does actually find upon entering. Once the party has glided through the docking gate, through a few expansive hallways, and into some strange manner of sliding elevator where the power of gravitation suddenly begins to grip them again, they come to the surface on what for all the world appears to be a ring-shaped replica of a vibrant, living planet. Leafy purple trees line the avenues and a rapid-transit system hugs the horizon, trains stopping briefly by the twinkling hivestems far off in the distance. The sky—well, it's not a sky, but it performs its job admirably in the stead of one—is locked in perpetual twilight, a warm greenish-pink glow emanating from the edges of the vaulted ceiling. Rose can hardly believe it when she learns that this is her new home.

Settling in doesn't take long, either; the compact prefabricated hive is much smaller than her old residence, but to have a freestanding hive at all is a luxury on the spacecraft, where square footage is more prized. That said, she isn't at leisure for much time. Duty begins the day that the ship leaves orbit, and within the hour of their final d
eparture, her husktop pings to alert her to a message a message addressed to Wing Commander Leldon—the name doesn't sit quite right with her, even after all this time, to say nothing of the incongruity that comes from seeing it paired with a military rank—informing her to present herself at orientation for newly conscripted officers.

She's relieved when another message follows it, addressed far less formally.

-- tephroticGladius [TG] began trolling telicTheomastix [TT] --
 
TG: private stride reporting in for duty who am i talking to here
TG: is it sarcastica the first alternias next top fish bitch
TG: or maybe imperial command murdercolonel leldon
TG: i gotta know what theyre calling you around these parts
TG: it better be good i live for those shitty nicknames i cant wait until i get promoted to slaughterlieutenant or w/e
TT: That's Wing Commander to you, Private.
TT: I do like Murdercolonel, though. Do you think the fleet has a suggestions box?
TG: i think you just described my dream job
TG: just staffing that suggestions box
TG: the entire day id just write my own down and stuff them in there and everytime some manglemarshal came by and gave me the side eye id be like hell no sir this is really important to keep around
TG: cant you see that this suggestions box is improving morale look at how popular the fucker is
TG: 57 suggestions today and thats just from me alone
TG: uh wait shit i mean
TG: yeah
TG: you get the point
TG: also wtf i am still a little thrown that you are literally the boss of me
TG: you better not let it get to your head i swear to god if you start walking around like you own the place im going to sic karkat on you
TG: btw did you know im going to learn how to fly a space fighter jet
TG: initially i was pretty pissed like way to step all over a big mans dreams i was hoping they would have me out there on the front lines throwing down some ninja shit on enemy aliens but like
TG: its kind of a sweet deal firing up the ion thrusters and making those space contrails my bitch
TT: I'd never taken you to be an aspiring fighter pilot, Dave.

It's a little unnerving for her, too, and despite the fact that she keeps up the banter with him, she wonders just what's happened to all of them. To her, too, because more often than not she has to remind herself as well that this is not a destination, but simply a waypoint where they must pause and plan out their next actions. Her mind protests with a reflexive flinch as she forces herself to refresh her motivations. A brief life story eventually manifests in the back of her mind, and finally Rose can think, again, of the things she's fighting for.

TT: Just...don't lose sight of what we're after, here.
TG: you know i wont

That's as good as it will get, and it slowly becomes clear to everyone that this is the new normal; in unfamiliar places, far out in the furthest reaches of space, any feeling of security, of safety in numbers has vanished. Talking about revolution is difficult enough for all of them, all of a sudden dwarfed by a military bureaucracy designed to conquer and retain thousands of planets across the galaxy for the glory of the Empress of Alternia—to say nothing of the expanse of space separating her close cluster of acquaintances from their clade's other groups—but to continue plotting, to scheme and actively abet rebellion becomes impossible. Rose finds herself looking over her shoulder every time she sends so much as a greeting to Dave or Karkat, and part of her suspects that the paranoia everything on this ship breeds is a consequence intentionally bred into the protocol.

She wouldn't call the feeling that blankets them over the following seasons complacency, but it isn't so far removed either. As the routine of military life begins to set in—drill in the evenings, mess hall at midnight, and strategic plans for the upcoming conquest in the morning—it becomes harder and harder for her to remember why they had even been planning an insurrection in the first place.

Gravity's effect is lightest in the highest floors, where the rustbloods are packed into hivestems like sardines. There is an almost rarefied air to the place—somehow the half-strength centrifugal force that anchors them to the ground when they're on the penthive levels imbues everything with a dreamlike surrealism, one that isn't replicated in the stark chutes and service hatches and airlocks of the zero-gravity sections of the ship. Here, the rustbloods fortunate enough to berth on a capital ship return after their long hours working as maintenance crew and military cannon fodder for the Empire.

Aradia isn't Dave's hivemate, but she might as well be—her tiny, cramped hivesuite is little more than a kitchen, a gaper, and a recuperacoon, and she doesn't even have to shout for her voice to carry across the paper-thin wall to his own block. In a sense, Dave is grateful—having her (and Karkat, whose own block is just down the hall) as neighbours is a substantial improvement over the last few sweeps, which he's spent holding his own at the pinnacle of an apartment complex, sometimes fighting his way up the floors to get back to his own suite. On the other hand, he's squeezed in tight with dozens of complete strangers as well, few of whom have any interest in reaching out beyond their own pre-established social groups, and trolls don't exactly make for good close company.

The mornings—they're simulated, to be sure, but the conventions of a planetary circadian rhythm are enough of a boon to productivity that even the rigidly utilitarian Empire does not do away with them entirely—are the only time where the lowest castes, those essentially consigned to wage slavery until an artificially assigned chronological sunrise, have time to themselves. Some choose to take advantage of the short time allowed for leisure to enjoy as much as sleep as they can get; Karkat counts himself among this number, and is rarely seen for more than a half hour before or after his long shifts in the hangar. But others, like Dave and Aradia, choose to carve out time from what little remains and enjoy it.

Cheap Lamitz alcohol worms its way into the underground economy of the vessel through merchant vessels, intermittently stopping over to offload their wares. The few older lowbloods that serve in senior enlisted positions complain that the prices are exorbitantly marked up for what amounts to little more than sweetened distilled vinegar, but when the market is cornered as thoroughly as it is on a spaceship hundreds of light years from the closest habitable planet, options are rather constrained.

The first time Dave tries a shot of the cloying, sticky drink, his stomach protests with revulsion, his mind goes blank, and he wakes up two hours later slung over a common room arm chair with coarse graffiti decorating his face. But by the second autumn, he's downing them in multiples with the best of them, earning something of a reputation among the upper floors of the district after a particularly infamous incident that he doesn't remember but which everyone else seems to, referring to it in hushed tones as simply The Stride Incident. Still, the minor celebrity is a nice change for him, instilling him with a feeling of satisfaction and purpose where everything prior had waned to dust.

Though Dave had first boarded the vessel with high hopes, he doesn't even think about revolution these days, unless Rose is there to admonish him with another of her reminders. Everything has changed since shipping off, even if those damned psychic visions still thrash against the back of his skull, forcing his eyes to roll back and reckon with the past that has brought them here again. He's even had more unsettling visions, brief flashes of adult trolls bearing an uncanny resemblance to his human (formerly-human) friends heading into battle against some unknown, unknowable enemy, but even that's not enough to bring him back around to thinking about ancestors and destinies. He's a retrocognitive, not a prophet, and even if there is something to these forebears that makes them part of the two of them now, Dave isn't sure he wants a part of that future.

And that's how things move forward. Dave glides across time like a needle on a turntable, keeping close to himself a self-imposed ignorance that his time alive wanes with every passing day. Aradia keeps him company; she, too, wants to extract from life what pleasure it has, rather than go through the motions of obligation that bound her every action since the moment she was hatched. During the nights, they go out together on their partnered runs in their fighter jets, training for the coming invasion of an alien empire.

Nobody ever mentions the name of the race that Alternia has set its sights on conquering; it's all part of the way the Empress motivates her soldiers to depersonalize and depersonify their enemies. When the opponent is a nebulous concept of a foreign influence over rightful Alternian space, it's much easier to keep anyone in the military from asking uncomfortable, inconvenient questions, like how many there are, or how intelligent they are, or what potential for cultural exchange there might be in their first contact. The Empire blankets other civilizations indiscriminately, suffocating any culture that existed previously, turning its residents into commodities for an exotic slave-trader, and quickly transforming its environment into one more hospitable to troll habitation, regardless of what it would do to the native population.

When the military exercises start ramping up, things only become more tense. Different positions on the ship quickly become different worlds, and communication begins to break down across caste lines. Leisure time evaporates, and the trickle of faces shuttled across the caste gradient by the central ring train dries up from one night to the next. It doesn't ease the tensions in the least, and starved of opportunities to unwind, it's only a matter of time before somebody snaps.

TG: rose could you fucking lay off talking about the rebellion for a single goddamn minute
TG: would it kill you to just give it a break
TT: I'm sorry?
TG: its just about the only thing youve brought up every time i set aside some free time to hang with you
TG: ill be honest here i really dont give a shit
TG: i dont want to talk about the new season of stridervision sitcoms featuring all your favourite ancestors
TG: and i dont want to strategize about ways to overthrow the admiral of this ship and replace him with someone who hates the empress or whatever your new plan is these days
TG: because i straight up do not care
TT: I...
TT: Why the hell do you think I'm doing this, Dave?
TT: In case you don't realize, I'm trying to put plans into motion to change things for the better in this universe. It's hard enough trying to develop eventual battle plans to dismantle an entire Empire, let alone doing so on my own.
TG: "change things for the better" okay that was pretty fucking transparent as far as trying to twist my arm into helping
TG: right sure okay we win the war no more hemocaste and we live hand in hand in coexistent harmony for the rest of our lives
TG: question is why do you care so much
TG: since like i dont know when the last time you checked out a colour wheel was
TG: but dude you have it literally the easiest out of all of us
TG: you are a literal fucking princess
TT: Oh, is that all that matters to you now? Caste and nothing more?
TT: Christ, you've gone native.
TT: I suppose from now on you'd like for me to call you Davize, too.
TG: hey in case you havent noticed it DOES FUCKING MATTER
TG: look around you rozaya
TG: let that one sink in because you havent been rose lalonde for a long time now
TG: youve got a luxury hive down by the fake river and a ritzy job as a glorified desk jockey training to send a bunch of unlucky motherfuckers to their deaths
TG: and you dont need me to tell you who the motherfucker is
TG: but the motherfucker is currently packed into a shitty cubicle trying to get a couple of hours of shitty shuteye before waking up and going right back to his shitty life running flight missions in a souped up suicide tin can
TG: sooner or later someones gonna realize how fucking smart you are and pick you out to be the next big man in charge of idk a ship or a planet or an entire cluster
TG: meanwhile im valued more or less as much as a couple of toothless old ladies looking for blackrom encounters on troll craigslist
TG: but never mind that dont be too concerned about me
TG: viva la revolucion right the rebel spirit never rests
TT: Is that what you really think?
TT: That I asked for this? That I want this?
TG: no
TG: none of us wanted this obviously i dont think youd be all about winning the war at all costs otherwise
TG: like i get that youre doing this because you think itll make my life better or something
TG: that i wont be fucking around at the bottom of the cosmic shitheap anymore once we turn society on its side
TG: but all that shit about ancestors and about destinies and rebellions has been going through my head for a long time now
TG: and its a nice thought it really is but it isnt going to happen
TG: not now, probably not ever
TG: why cant we just forget that now
TG: ive already accepted it lalonde my life is going to be short and most of it is gonna suck
TG: just let me die on my own terms at the very least
TT: Don't forget why we're here in the first place.
TG: what
TG: you mean because you pulled some strings with a squid
TG: i get it im grateful better an alien in a fucked up slave society than dead i guess sure
TG: but dont you dare use that as blackmail against me
TT: No, no! That's not what I meant at all.
TT: I never told you about the deal, did I?
TG: what deal
TT: The bargaining chip I offered against the price of our lives returned to us, with an opportunity to escape the cycle of the game?
TT: It wasn't nothing, and if it had been I wouldn't be here asking you to stick with me on this.
TG: what are you getting at
TT: The collateral to bring you back was my own servitude.
TT: I can't back out now, Dave. There's no "sorry I broke my oath" contingency, no slap on the wrist for poor effort, nothing at all should I dare to declare the contract void.
TG: you did what now
TT: My promise to them was that I would serve whatever aims they hold in the new world they created for us, and their goal is exactly what our ancestors have told us it is.
TT: Fair's fair. I'll admit that there's a certain part of my desire to the Empress gone that's rooted in my own sympathy for you, to say nothing of the pain it causes me to see you suffering as a result of a decision made by my hand.
TT: But a deal is a deal, woegothics or no, so I'm afraid that I can't simply wind this one down for your sake.
TT: So all I can ask is that you trust me on this one, and have a little faith that we'll make it through.
TG: i
TG: fucking hell rose
TG: i cant say no

The revelation floors him. Dave feels like the room is spinning—it is, but not quite in the way he imagines it to be—and as he settles back onto the cramped sill in the corner of his hivesuite, the closest thing he has to a couch, he wonders when it all went off the rails.

He leans back with exquisite care. On the spaceship, he has to be mindful of his horns in a way he didn't have to back on Alternia; his dilapidated couch had once been the centrepiece of his apartment, but the whole thing wouldn't even fit in the space he can call his now, little more than a corpsecloset. It has to be some sick joke on the part of the engineers designing these grotesquely sleek living quarters to allocate the absolute minimum amount of space to the trolls with the sweetest racks. At least his don't spiral out to the side, he thinks, a pang of sympathy rising in his heart for Aradia's neck muscles. Nevertheless, the horns can only preoccupy him for so long; before long, he begins to drift off into fiftful sleep.

Though he's long since used to the visions that come and go in his mind, it's been a good while since he's bothered to really listen. The trolls that populate his dreams are, by now, intimately familiar in their own ways. He knows their lives backwards and forwards, their names, interests, quirks of personality, and can't help but laugh half the time that his psychic power involves developing encyclopedic knowledge of genetically identical copies of his friends. But it is the most recent development in these visions—seeing his own ancestor—that unsettles him most, and he snaps to attention when he sees the familiar horns on the head of someone who looks very much like himself, but more still like another.

The parallels are so powerful, so visible, so telling that it pains Dave to think about them. Direke Stride is a dead ringer for his older brother, horns and cosmic dye job aside. He has the same laugh, the same knowing smirk, the same smug superiority in his words, even—especially?—when talking to those higher on the hemospectrum than him. The flagrant disregard for decorum and authority is the same as it ever was, and now that Dave has tuned in to hear his story he can't bear to stop listening.

Direke Stride is hatched among among a world of turmoil. The fifty sweeps previous have seen the hatching, the rise, and the fall of a heretic. They have seen the enslavement of his followers, the death of nobles, lawyers, and mothers, and even the beginnings of the Empire's great plunge into the black, empty expanse of the unknowns of space. And from the moment he emerges from the dingy depths of the brooding caverns, Stride has visions. They're triggered by the muted whispers, the rumours that whirl around him like wildfire, of the trolls that came here before, and these are the things he sees: the revolutionaries with the bright, burning passion of conviction in ideas like freedom and liberation, their charismatic leader sporting a radiant hue of crimson blood separate from the hemospectrum altogether.

Another troll might cast these thoughts aside and choose to eke out whatever living could be obtained on the margins of society, but Stride isn't satisfied with that. At nine sweeps, he's already hitching a ride as a fugitive to Keleset, the first offworld colony of the Empire. Here, the criminals, the rabblerousers, and the exiles of Alternia make their home on the harsh, unforgiving, barely-terraformed rock orbiting just inside the habitable zone of their solar system's massive red giant.

Quickly, among this rotating circle of ne'er-do-wells and colonists looking for a brighter future offworld, he finds a ready audience to recount his visions and tales of a signless troll who, not long ago, suffered the ultimate punishment fighting for their rights, for their freedoms. The first that Dave recognizes is the oliveblooded girl. Dave recoils at the sight of her instinctively, unmistakably the ancestral forebear of Jaeden (it's been more than a sweep since she has gone by any other name), but watches on; by now he's already beholden to the demands of the vision anyway. That she's receptive to his proselytizing is hardly surprising; soon enough, though, Direke's charisma attracts more unlikely followers. One night, two new disciples join the ranks of his weekly sermon. Dave does a double take at the first, a blueblooded airman with all the earnest pride of John Egbert, but it is nothing compared to the shock that rattles through his veins when he sees the governor of the colony herself, the Autocrat Roxana Leldon, make her way to the front of the makeshift chapel to receive communion.

Dave feels his blood pusher lurch. All at once, his life is pulled apart into thousands of pieces again.

Before his vision can continue, he feels the harsh glare of artificial light spilling into his field of vision from all sides, his eyes squinting automatically in an attempt to shut it out. His head is wrenched into an unnatural position, with his horns inartfully jammed a corner. His neck burns from stiffness, and he's about to check the time—he hadn't recalled setting an alarm so early—when he sees the reason he's stirred. Aradia's looking at him, eyes earnest with purpose.

hi dave

Even the greeting is uttered with an undertone of urgency. Dave can immediately tell that something isn't right; her normally collegial, friendly tone has vanished, replaced with with something else that Dave can't quite place, but which fills him with a feeling of uneasy dread.

want a hand getting down?
yeah sure thanks

Aradia offers him her arm, and he grabs it, stabilizing himself as he slowly half-falls, half-floats down to the floor. Her eyes flick away from him, then back, locking with Dave's as he shrugs his shoulders, stretching his pulled muscles.

so whats going on aradia
must be pretty important if youre dragging me away from my beauty sleep
dreams were a real trip though remind me to tell you later
yes maybe later
right now though you should take some coffee and stimulants
uh
okay then any reason im supposed to get the shit wired out of me
or are we just pulling some insomniac seance crunkfest
all getting frisky with some space ghosts
earning some MAD creds with the starving artists when were high as balls on caffeine
shit i am off my game today
im so fucking tired
seriously aradia why am i awake
i wanted you to know so you could get ready
were going to be called to battle stations in fifteen minutes

It's not exactly a shock—their military drills have been underway for at least two seasons now—but it is a surprise. Dave had expected something more than this. A memorandum, perhaps, or a gradual ramp-up, even a week's warning to allow them to enter the mindset of warfare. That's when he looks around, sees the trolls around him, and understands: they're already in the mindset of warfare, as they always have been and always will be, right up to the point of their ignominious deaths. Briefly, he considers his own role in all of this; in a few minutes, he will strap himself into a fighter jet and fight for the glory of his own worst enemy, risking life and limb for every moment he spends stripped bare of the safety of the great hiveship.

The thought has crossed his mind more than once that he might never return from one of these missions. But this time, he has something else to hold onto. A sturdy image congeals of Direke Stride and Roxana Leldon, of Dave Strider and Rose Lalonde, and that's when he knows for sure: he's coming back. One way or another, when all of this is over, he will stand side by side with his sister and watch the Empress fall.

Chapter Text

"All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near."

—Kaniye Westin, tactician for the Lyrene Clan (later executed), from The Art of War

The Imperial Fleet calls it a "war." Rose has to restrain herself from laughing every time she hears the term in official communications, and has to try harder still to keep a straight face when she has to use the term herself. The enemy—disembodied, without a name; it is quite easy to issue commands to commit a genocide when all she ever sees is video of spaceships in orbit around a yellow gas giant and its satellites—is no match for the might of even a single Alternian capital ship, and under the weight of the Tarqin and its junior partner III Perzos, an Executor-class dreadnought just over half the size of its anchor vessel, it does not break so much as crumble. Even Dave, ever austere in his assessments of his own chances to make it through the night, eventually lets up and acknowledges that the Empire is routing its enemy thoroughly.

Only a handful of the thousand-odd deployed Alternian Stingrays are even damaged in the first pass, and only two fall to the timid, careful enemy fire. On the other side, dozens of smaller vessels fall prey to the agile, powerful fighter jets of the Empire, and one of their three largest vessels, a cylindrical shell orders of magnitude smaller than the Tarqin, has already begun to peel apart, buckling as air rushes out of its hull from the dozens of rapidly expanding holes compromising its structural integrity. From the comfort of the command centre, Rose watches as the remainder of the entire conflict unfolds, from start to ignominious finish. Five more passes later and the bulk of the enemy's fleet has been obliterated; the few small vessels that remain scatter, facing inevitable death: either the the Stingrays in hot pursuit will run them down, or they will die alone, in the cold, empty expanse of space.

After the rout, Rose confers with her superiors to discuss their strategies for dispatching the remainder of the enemy's fleet. They are all in agreement: the III Perzos will be more than enough to destroy the stragglers on its own. Even with a single habitation ring and half the fighter jet capacity, none have any doubts about its capabilities. And with that order, the ship is gone, leaving only the Tarqin in its slow-moving orbit around the largest of the moons, waiting to prepare its assault on the home system of the alien civilization.

The festivities on the remaining ship are more muted among those of violet caste. Rose can't reach Dave—he's already left for a party with Aradia and, more reluctantly, with Karkat—but she successfully manages to get in touch with Terezi, and invites her for a drink after the debriefings. They are both a little stiff and socially inept; after a handful of seasons communicating with friends mostly over the impersonal avenues of text messaging, neither is particularly adept with social interaction, and their reflexive reliance on the chain of command drilled into them by the last few sweeps of instruction and military training certainly does not help matters. But both are weary of the way things are, and eager to find some way to relax among the chaos of their lives on the battleship.

TH1S 4LCOHOL 1S T3RR1BL3
DONT TH3Y S3RV3 4NYTH1NG B3TT3R 4T TH3 F4NCY SNOOTY B4RS 4ROUND H3R3 OR 1S 3V3RYON3 PR3TTY MUCH STUCK W1TH YL4M1TZ
They certainly seem to have cornered the market, haven't they?
I'm willing to bet that we're all suffering on account of Tollya's poor taste. But as goes the whim of the Captain-General, so goes the Imperial Fleet.
I'm sure the travelling merchants have a field day raking in caegars here, selling vinegar and calling it wine.
44UGHH
WH3N YOU T4K3 OV3R TH1S SH1P PL34S3 T3LL M3 YOULL G3T B3TT3R DR1NKS
My first official decree would be to name you Imperial Sommelier.
3XC3LL3NT
N3XT SW33PS H4RV3ST W1LL 1NCLUD3 CL4SS1C F4VOUR1T3S SUCH 4S 4PPL3B3RRY BL4ST S4UV1GNON 4ND OR4NG3 CRUSH SH1R4Z
Yes, I'm certain that I would not regret my decision to name you Imperial Sommelier.
But let's stop complaining about what's here, shall we? This is supposed to be a celebration, after all.
Y34H
1T DO3SNT R34LLY LOOK TH3 P4RT THOUGH WH4TS GO1NG ON H3R3
1 W4S R34DY TO ST4RT 4 D4NC3 P4RTY BUT 1T 4PP34RS TH4T NOBODY H3R3 1S B31NG F3ST1V3 4T 4LL!
1 4M V3RY D1S4PPO1NT3D 1N YOUR P3OPL3

Terezi sniffs and heaves a dissatisfied sigh, clutching her drink in both hands and surveying the other patrons of the bar. She isn't exactly surprised at the lack of vitality: highbloods, especially, are not particularly social creatures, and combined with the fact that they quite literally run cooler than rust-, bronze-, and goldbloods, those of blue and violet hue have a lower tendency towards energetic self-expression not involving mass murder. But even after their triumph over an alien civilization, most of the upper crust of the Alternian military are content to hunch over their drinks sullenly and descend slowly into inebriation. Rose can only answer Terezi's allegations with a resigned, almost Gallic shrug.

Yes, well. 'My people' have greater problems, I believe, than their inability to loosen up after a rousing bout of galactic domination.
NONS3NS3 ROS3!
TH3R3 1S NOTH1NG MOR3 1MPORT4NT TH4N H4V1NG TH3 1NBORN 4B1L1TY TO BR34K 1T DOWN WH3N TH3 S1TU4T1ON C4LLS FOR 1T
BUT 1 GU3SS TH3R3 1S L1TTL3 1 C4N DO TO G3T TH3M OUT OF TH3 ST4T3 TH3YR3 1N
TR4G1C4LLY 1 M4Y H4V3 TO 4CC3PT TH4T TH3 3NT1R3 S34 DW3LL1NG POPUL4T1ON 1S F4T4LLY 1GNOR4NT TO TH3 COOLK1DS W4Y OF L1F3
Why didn't you join Dave, Aradia, and Karkat? My understanding is that they were going to have a more conventional fête, a boozy bacchanal replete with dancing and a makeshift DJ performance. That seems to be more to your taste.
W3LL YOU KNOW
1D H4V3 L1K3D TO HON3STLY BUT UNFORTUN4T3LY TH1NGS B3TW33N M3 4ND D4V3 4ND K4RK4T H4V3 B33N, W3LL
W31RD L4T3LY
Do you think it may have had something to do with the fact that the last time all of us met, you threatened to arrest Dave's hip bones?
1T 1S NOT MY F4ULT TH4T H3 1S 4LTOG3TH3R TOO P3LV1C, ROS3
TH3 SH33R D3GR33 OF H1PP1TY TH4T W4S OCCURR1NG W4S OUTL4W3D 1N 4T L34ST TH1RT33N D1FF3R3NT JUR1SD1CT1ONS!
1T W4S MY R3PONS1B1L1TY TO D3T41N H1M FOR H1S SUSP1C1OUS GYR4T1ONS, 1M SUR3 YOU C4N UND3RST4ND TH4T MUCH
I'm thinking that might have something to do with it.
H3H3H3H3
BUT NO, 4S 4MUS1NG 4S TH4T 1S 1M 4FR41D TH4T 1TS SOM3TH1NG MUCH L3SS 4MUS1NG TH4N TH3 FLU1D DYN4M1CS OF BOOTY POPP1NG
HON3STLY? 4S MUCH 4S 1 H4T3 TO 4DM1T 1T 1 F33L L1K3 TH3Y JUST DONT TRUST M3 4NYMOR3
NOT L1K3 TH3Y US3D TO 4T L34ST
NOT L1K3 TH3Y D1D B3FOR3 W3 C4M3 ON BO4RD TH3 SH1P

It's not just Terezi, either; regardless of Dave's recommitment to the purpose of eventual revolution, a rift has grown along caste lines, and not even the bond of brotherhood can mend it entirely. On one side sit Dave, Aradia, and Karkat, two of them rustbloods and the third passing himself off as such. On the other side sit Rose and Terezi, uncomfortably clumped together into the category of "the highbloods." Though there is almost as much disparity in social standing between Rose and Terezi as between Terezi and the other three, the finer points are largely glossed over in favour of a more binary model. Part of it is the contagious mentality of the rustbloods around them; anyone whose blood bleeds bluer than olive, for many in their cohort, is untrustworthy by nature. And for all that Rose and Terezi are their friends, they are also their enemies, as direct beneficiaries of a system that keeps them all down.

Rose's first instinct is to laugh it off as best she can, explaining away their shared distrust as the product of being steeped in a hivemind. Then she stops, and the smile vanishes from her face as she considers the fact that her first instinct might be right. The spectre of her childhood fascination with the supernatural still remains, and there is still a brief stutter-step in her mind every time she stops to consider the fact that "magic" is a perfectly legitimate explanation for dozens of phenomena that occur around them all daily. Considering that the reason for their like-mindedness might be the result of telepathy initially strikes her as absurd, but with further reflection, she acknowledges sadly that it could easily be their reality. "Everyone's crazy now," Dave has said more than once before, and Rose never disbelieved it, but it's only now that she has fathomed the depth of what he was saying.

Everything has been crazy—that doesn't even merit mentioning. But everyone? She's done her best to maintain control and keep her wits about herself. She's tried hard to shut out and box in the insanity that rests within her, to keep its low, insistent rumble from rising and overcoming her senses. And for the most part, Rose would like to think that she has succeeded. But reflecting on it makes it painfully obvious and all too real: looking back, she can see just how many times she's moved the goalposts further and further away from where she started. What kind of Rose Lalonde has earned a body count in the hundreds? What kind of Rose Lalonde anxiously awaits promotion for her expert command in systematically dismantling and exterminating a spacefaring, sentient species? What kind of Rose Lalonde celebrates it with a drink?

That morning, dizzy with revelation, she cannot will herself to change, or even to believe that she can change. She isn't that Rose Lalonde anymore, and has not been for a long time. And she wants it to feel tragic, wants to hold a funeral in her heart and mourn for that one small part of her that she believed would remain, but she feels no sadness at its passing. She feels nothing at all.

That, perhaps more than anything, is what terrifies her the most.

When he wakes up, Dave is without a schedule, for the first time in as long as he can remember. It's disorienting—suddenly his timepiece, helpfully displaying the same time as ever, no longer keeps him moored but leaves him at a loss. He barely the remembers the morning before, a celebration more in spite of Alternia's military victory than because of it. Just about the time Aradia hands him first shot of Lamitz and it slithers down his throat with a practised ease, his recollections fade to black.

What he does remember is the following day, the dreaming visions that coat his mind in a sickly pall, the looping, insistent story that never ends but only builds more and more upon itself in his mind, odds and ends caking together and congealing into this horrific accretion of narrative which won't shut up no matter what he does, no matter how many questionably legal and even more questionably safe pills he takes from Terezi Pyrope on a kind of honour system that she won't fuck him up beyond repair, no matter how many times Aradia keeps watch over his writhing, scrawny body trapped in his dreaming self's mind. That, itself, is such a tangle of thorny contradiction, still, that he wonders—sometimes—whether he and Rose aren't still related somehow, more than the rest of them, and when he wakes up in a cold sweat, two minutes before the alarm, the corners of his skull are still resounding with the echoes of the dream emerging from the abyss in the centrepoint of his mind.

He looks around with bleary eyes. Aradia's there, face perfectly devoid of expression in a way that still unsettles Dave, a little bit. He can still hear his brother's voice fading over the roar of a witching pyre.

hey

Aradia nods, and her face resolves into a smile.

hello dave! how are you feeling?
not much sleep huh?
okay im going to take a crack at how you could possibly know that
todays science theory number one says it might be because the bags under my eyes probably look like a post-apocalyptic colostomy bag
tell me megido am i on the money
well considering how late we were out i dont think any of us got much sleep but then again
its hard to break old habits so here we are
yeah speaking of old habits
i dont want to be the one to shit in the salad here
but as much fun as its gotta be to watch me thrash in the throes of some prophetic visionary mindfuck im pretty sure weve taken a turn down this road before
remember that? as it happens this road is called memory lane and its about to do some hardcore fucking intersecting with an agreement i thought we had made crystal fucking clear
namely that you checking me out while im floundering around in my coon due to dreamvision freakouts could instigate some hella agitation
more agitation than a baby boomer republican tied down and gagged in front of an abortion clinic
which ok extreme example but it gets my meaning across all the same
well to be fair you did tell me that you wanted me to keep track of you in case your brain decided to betray your body and try to kill it
then again that was after about the tenth shot of lamitz so it might just have been the alcohol speaking
but on the other hand considering your visions tend toward the violent i didnt really want to take any chances
oh
well shit sorry
i guess i did say that
now i really do look like that republican
see aradia im all about callbacks
im making references so obscure that even rose starts looking at me sideways thats how off the hook they are
off the hook like the the three point shot that the big man is dunking
(the big man in this metaphor is me btw)
anyway
youre right though stuffs been getting pretty morbid in the dreams
lot of elder vantas shitting out ragesnakes while everyone looks kind of uncomfortable
lot of captors grandpa becoming fish hitlers personal game boy
lot of my bro getting strung up in chains and doing some boss level mortal coil shuffling
like sure weve all seen some shit but still its hard to see a guy go like that especially when
especially when what?
especially when it keeps happening
holy fuck

He cannot believe he hasn't noticed it before now, can't quite fathom the extent of his ignorance for missing it time and again, and can't quite forgive himself for coming to the realization through a stumbling, accidental callback to his unbelievably shitty old webcomic. But when he goes to sleep again, everything starts anew. This time, though, Dave knows what he is doing.

When he looks down in his dream, he is wearing the raiment of a knight, legendary half-sword in hand.

The great, shadowy blot of the Tarqin completes one steady orbit of the largest moon before the surface-dwellers take any action. But on the morning of the seventh day, a small shuttle climbs from the surface of the satellite and flies slowly towards the capital ship. There is brief deliberation—a few officers are concerned that the vessel may be a suicide mission, intended to do as much damage as possible to the Alternian fleet—but Rose argues against it. Given their level of technology, she asserts that the ship could not possibly hold more than token explosive potential, and is instead a diplomatic expression of surrender; furthermore, should the ship turn out to be a bomb, the sturdy construction of the Tarqin would assure containment to no more than one, or perhaps two hangars.

Her effective rhetoric earns the agreement of her superiors, and a cordial invitation to head the welcoming party. It isn't the first time the fate of her life hangs in the balance of the decisions she makes, and it won't be the last. But her placement does earn her something valuable: information. Before Rose leaves, Admiral Erzbet pulls Rose aside and gives her a tablet containing all of the intelligence that the Alternian Empire has on the alien species, collected months ahead of time by the Empress herself. It's already clear from the secrecy that has surrounded it all thus far that this information is tightly guarded, but it's not until Erzbet warns her of the consequences that could come from divulging the data that she realizes how exclusive the knowledge held inside the primer really is.

The eutjjal are, Rose learns, a species with some superficial resemblance to trolls (and humans, her mind almost forgets to add). On a visceral level they feel quite familiar, supported by an endoskeletal structure with two hands and two legs, a bipedal gait, and a head with eyes and a mouth. Some part of her wonders idly whether some facet of convergent evolution results in the curious predomination of the body plan shared by humans, trolls, and now eutjjal, but she dismisses the thought immediately; it's not relevant to her current task, which is to receive the envoy from this broken, defeated species and be crowned the victor of a brief, bloody massacre. Personalizing them can only lead to the inconvenient pangs of sympathy.

In the end, she can only study the primer for so long before she is called away. Her first destination, she soon learns, is not the hangar where the eutjjal delegation will be received, but to a kind of green room, where several servants begin to attend to her appearance. Rose can't even feign surprise by now; it's not a matter of fashion but of formality that they begin donning her in the vestments and the trappings of royalty. Presenting her as a seasoned diplomat and high-ranking political figure, if not a princess in her own right, is the heart of an Alternian approach to diplomacy so utterly utilitarian that it is easy to forget how shamelessly canny it is, too. There's little need for the profession when victory is assured, after all, and when everything will be conducted through a cultural and linguistic barrier, diplomatic tactics hold little importance indeed.

(When the negotiations begin, they will call her "Lady Rozaya Leldon, Hand of the Empress," and Rose will quite nearly burst out with laughter to think that all it takes to become the most powerful diplomat in the galaxy is a tiara and a few hours with a stylist.)

When the servants are done with her, Rose looks for all the world like an heiress to the Empire herself. From head to frond-nub, she has been drenched with ostentatious jewellery; several brand-new piercings replete with purple rubies and golden chains dot her fins, and encircling her horns is a brilliant crown adorned with the personal insignia of Her Imperious Condescension IV Peixes, Empress of Alternia, Princess-Elect of the Popular Imperial Vanguard, and soon-to-be Despotess of Eutjjal. And at the centre of it all is the vivid gold-accented tyrian gown draped over her lithe, ash-grey body.

A few marines enter and curtly inform her that the eutjjal are roughly ten minutes from arrival, and that they have been ordered to accompany her to Hangar V, the vessel bay reserved exclusively for receiving defeated aliens. Rose stares at them incredulously, until she realizes that they aren't joking, and that the capital ship of the Imperial Fleet has a hangar bay specifically designed to intimidate the opponents they have just ground into the ground with their bootheel.

She half-laughs, half-scoffs with derision—and perhaps not disappointment, because she's beyond expecting any better from trolls, but certaintly with resignation—and follows the soldiers as they march to the elevator that will take them from the habitation ring to the zero-gravity section of the ship. Her stomach lurches with discomfort upon leaving the ring—she hasn't once left the comfort of normal Alternian gravity since boarding the ship. She accustoms herself quickly enough to the lack of gravity in the chute leading out to the hangar, but it still seems out of place to her mind, still relying on dim recollections of human television series to imagine the occasion, that her first encounter with the eutjjal vessel will occur in a weightless environment.

Looking dignified is substantially harder, Rose finds, when she has to keep glancing back at her dress to make sure it hasn't floated out of shape in compromising fashions. She and the small cluster of soldiers stand (or, well, hover) at attention off to the side of the massive Hangar V. All around her, dozens of techicians and engineers spring from floor-wall-ceiling to floor-wall-ceiling, checking readouts and preparing to open the starboard-side airlock, a great metal wall that stretches to the horizons of her vision. Over the loudspeaker, a voice begins a dispassionate countdown—five, four, three, two, one—and the bay doors open.

On the other side of the doors is a compact, cylindrical vessel dwarfed in scale by the doors, by the hangars, by everything around her, and the intended effect is clear. The eutjjal ship is not much larger than one of the human space shuttles, Rose thinks, though she can't say for sure; her memories of those times have dimmed to the point where her recollections of Earth are just as much fantasy as they are fact. No more real than the orange-hued aliens that emerge from the spaceship would have been in her previous earthbound existence.

Engineers and technicians move in to bring the ship from its slow crawl to a halt, lashing carbon-fibre ropes to the body to make sure it remains in place in the centre of the hangar. As they complete their procedues, Rose looks on somewhat goggle-eyed at the affair: even with her perspective twisted around from floating weightlessly in the middle of the cavernous room, Rose can tell that the eutjjal are a good deal taller than the trolls. They seem to more readily and gracefully navigate microgravity; their delicate bodies are spindly and unmuscled, but they glide through the air like they're hatched for it, while the shorter, stockier trolls always appear to hurtle from one place to another.

Rose's admiration of their elegant handling of the vagaries of inertia are cut short before long; a goldblood arrives and explains to her that he has been assigned to translate the eutjjal language, and he hastily ushers them all out of the hangar bay. Together all of them float back into the hallway so they can carry out their business in a more comfortable environment—for the trolls if not for the eutjjal, given their appearances. But then, they've just lost an interstellar war. A high gravity negotiation room is the least of their concerns.

The negotiation itself is frustrating, if tedious and entirely lacking in surprises. Having to navigate through a translator exasperates and exhausts her, but fortunately there isn't much to Alternian diplomacy. Rose can promise whatever she likes—"basic respect and decency" first among them—with impunity, because at the end of the day, she knows the Empire will do whatever it pleases.

And it does. So through the low, rumbling protestation of the shattered remains of her moral compass, she assures and assuages and offers empty promises, knowing that whatever she says, Alternia will move in and dismantle their society, and—slowly but inexorably—exterminate their people. And the real kicker is that all of this will trace back to Lady Rozaya Leldon, Hand of the Empress. All of this begins with her.

Chapter Text

"When trolls die they only appear to die. They are still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to celebrate their death. All moments, past, present and future, have always existed, always will exist. It is just an illusion we have here on Alternia that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once that moment is gone it is gone forever."

—Jeohan Steurt, the Cosmogon Eventide, High Netherpriest of the Faceless (later executed), from Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Wigglers' Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death

TG: no fuck this im outie
TG: i was under the distinct impression that we were gonna touch down and we were going to be done with this cut rate bargain bin gravity bullshit
TG: instead we got moons one through four each one somehow shittier than the one before
TG: like
TG: heres the rundown alright
TG: gas giant four moons you would think you cant go wrong at least one of them has to be something other than the sorry excuses for rotating chunks of rock that they are
TG: its not just any gas giant either its like halfway to being a second sun
TG: like a really pissed off star that still resents the fact that it could never really get off the ground
TG: instead it lives in the solar systems basement playing troll call of duty and gets into screaming matches with brown dwarfs from halfway across the galaxy
TG: and moon one gets to be the personal punching bag of this abusive dickrag gas giant
TG: that fucker orbits so close that it might as well be the grillmasters personal paradise
TG: do you think troll dave fondue is a good idea no i dont either glad we got that sorted out
TG: moon two is on the other extreme because apparently im fucking goldilocks now
TG: its a great place to live if you dont mind having to snowshoe through a blizzard to work
TG: and you know moon three might not be so bad
TG: just right on the goldilocks scale for moons
TG: nice sunny days some water fun for the whole family you could even pile up into a troll station wagon on the weekend and go to the beach
TG: never mind that though i kinda forgot to mention the radioactive wasteland that they turned their north pole into
TG: now they have three eyed polar bears and penguins floating on whats left of alien antarctica infecting everyone with atomic spew
TG: (im not even gonna bring like the hellish death atmosphere into it because thats true of pretty much everything around here)
TG: and then theres moon number 4 which is a desolate tiny little piece of shit orbiting so far away that the one universal constant just noped the fuck out
TG: gravity was doing its annual inspection of all the planetoids and got to this pisspot pulling some kind of halfassed orbit around this fat fucking yellow has-been and just shook its head and left
TG: and that was it for gravity for satellite number four
TG: you cant even jump there or you just straight up ollie off the fucking rock at escape velocity
TG: not like the first three are that much better either i was hoping to get a break from rustblood special half the gravity for the price of one guess that was too much to ask
TG: and like forget the rest its basically just the grody grubloaf crumbs on the gas giants oily neckbeard
TG: shits crusted with forgotten asteroids like you wouldnt believe its disgusting
TG: so this is great
TG: except for the part where it sucks hard
TG: so like i said
TG: bye
TT: Hello, Dave.

They eventually settle on the second moon. The Empire calls it Tollya 514–C2, a name systematically gifted to it through the custom of triumphal monikers, but the Alternian presence that sets up shop ends up informally adopting the name given to it by the local residents. Eutko, as it comes to be known by both troll and eutjjal alike, is the chillier of the twin satellite homeworlds of the eutjjal, and quickly becomes the centre of affairs for the military government that swallows the system whole. It's not the most hospitable place to live, with a thin atmosphere that retains less heat than the other three satellites of the large gas giant Laneun (or Tollya 514–C, depending on who's asking). But at the very least the air isn't laced with chemicals toxic to trolls' physiology like Kolyeol, Tanko, or Maian, so until Imperial terraformers outgas all of the undesirable elements from the other planets and moons, or until a new space station can be assembled in low orbit, it appears that Eutko will be Dave's and Rose's new home for the time being.

Ironically, for all of Dave's complaints about the temperature, Rose ends up most uncomfortable with the climate on their new home. Her slower metabolism leaves her desperate for more temperate conditions, even as she recalls with fondness her childhood spent in snowy New York. The star system's distant orange dwarf binary provides some warmth, as does the reflection of light from the golden-yellow gas giant that dominates the sky. Even still, during the short nights temperatures invariably plunge below zero. Dave bundles up like the rest of them, but it's a lesser concern for him—his body runs hot, and produces more than enough heat to keep him safe from the elements.

If anything, after spending what is rapidly approaching half of his lifespan in the darkness, it's the constant light that bothers Dave most. He's grown unused to wearing sunglasses—Fleet regulations forbid wearing them over fears of identity theft and impersonation of higher castes—but even with the shades, the glare from the suns and the giant planet's surface is enough to irritate his eyes. However the time is divided, some component of every day makes him long for the regular schedule and the climate control of the Fleet's vessels.

The complex balance of the moons' orbit and their revolution around the gas giant makes for an unusual day-night cycle. Tidally locked to the great planet, each location on Eutko receives a certain amount of light from sunshine and a certain amount from planetshine. On one extreme, the sun-bleached hemisphere receives the brightest sunlight for long hours, but its position turned away from the planet makes for cold, dark nights. On the other, the planetside hemisphere receives little direct insolation, but lacks the extreme cold of the outside hemisphere. Most of the trolls settle for the ring between the two, with its limited sunlight and the warm yellow of the planet low on the horizon for most of the twenty-five hour day.

For the life of him Dave, once a god over the domain of time, can't even begin to understand the division of the days into light and darkness, between sunlight and eclipse, starlight and Laneun's glow, twin suns and twin satellites. The eutjjal languages have dozens of terms to refer to the intricate balance of daytimes and twilights, and none of them are compatible in the least with the simple circadian rhythm of the trolls. Of course, as with almost everything else in the Empire, the great state bureaucratic organ steamrolls the curious eutjjal cycle altogether and replaces it with the rigid, inflexible Universal Imperial Time—just another chronometric system that eludes the erstwhile Knight of Time.

And that's how time passes. The Tarqin leaves its orbit above the surface of Eutko, leaving the remaining stationed military—totalling over one hundred thousand—to run the new outpost of the Empire. Official business is carried out on the timescale of the Imperial bilunar perigee, of course, led by the satellite's new official representative to the Empress, Lady fucking Rozaya Leldon herself—Dave can scarcely believe that by some absurd twist of fate, he's backpedalled his way into some kind of undefined relationship with the new Director of the Colonial Council—but for most of society, the passage of days is marked on the classical eutjjal calendar: by the moon's twenty-five hour orbit around its parent planet, and subsequently by the planet's 332-local-day orbit around its stars.

On the other hand, there's a certain comfort to it for Dave: returning to the familiar timescale of days, weeks, months, and years gives him something to hold onto when everything else seems to be changing, seems every day to introduce him to something else unfamiliar. Even the established routine of a military existence is gone, replaced with the unknowable, murky uncertainty of this new life. What's a colonist to do? Society doesn't exactly spring up organically with trolls running the show—or it does, but it's a society entirely unlike anything Dave's ever seen. The only things that he knows for sure are that he can trust Karkat and Aradia, and that he can believe Rose.

It's strange to think that with a galaxy that's shrunk down to the size of a rustblood lifetime, that everything else is wide-open, a blinding light of possibility in the dark expanse of space. But that's how it's going to be from now on, with Rose leading the way. It's impossible to see into the future—that's the curse of retrocognition—but maybe, with Dave at her back and Rose at his, it all might work out, somehow.

Everything around her is ruins. Though her morning commute is all of a ten-storey corpsecloset ride from a terraced hivesuite to her penthive Director's office, located in the heart of Eutko's shiny, new downtown, surrounded by gleaming carpenter-drone construction projects, her sight cannot help but extend beyond the new city limits to survey the blasted remnants of a civilization that has already become a galactic footnote. They might as well already be ancient, the crumbling relics of an interstellar empire about whom little would ever be known beyond their name. The remaining eutjjal are thoroughly disassociated with that empire, anyway, the remainder of their lives and their collective existence promised to exotic slave traders, and soon enough they'll live only in the fading memories of a few aging highbloods.

Rose keeps a worn, dislodged capstone from one of the old eutjjal monuments in her office, a sort of monument itself now, not only for the fallen race that once traced the same path she takes down to the wide-brimmed river whenever she leaves her residence, but to remember the part of herself that blew away in the wind with those aliens. For all she knows (or will ever know), the eutjjal might have committed atrocities that would bring a visage of shock to even the most seasoned Alternian general or governor, but in her heart the eutjjal will always be human; humanizing them, at least, gives her someone to sympathize with, a benevolent spacefaring species reaching out into the darkness of space only to fall victim to the grand Imperial war machine.

That was her, too, once.

Now she looks on the rubble of a doomed people, reading it as she would tea leaves. Raven on the horizon: death or ill prospects, following the path of a lightning bolt of shock and surprise. More alarming still, the form of a yoke in the twisted, mangled foundations of an old structure: this is domination beyond one's control. She shivers with expectation, and turns her focus instead on the frigid gale whipping eddies of snow across the gloaming planetshine.

If she sets aside the huge golden gas giant dominating the horizon, Rose could be forgiven for thinking she were back home again, with her nose pressed to the floor-to-ceiling glass windows surveying a midwinter New York blizzard. Sustained in the whispers of the wind, she can almost hear the encouraging voice of her mother, telling her (in a way that she never did, in a way that she never could, though Rose can barely summon memories sharp enough to tell her otherwise) to stay positive despite the forboding symbols of omnipresent doom, that more important than looking back at what has been lost among the ruins of the past is looking forward to the projects of development in the future.

The song of a lost mother, however off-key it might be, is too tempting to resist. So she turns away from the windows opening onto the sky, enters the elevator, and takes it all the way to the basement floor: out of the lofty chambers of the Empire and into another world entirely: the underground hub of the new colony.

-- telicTheomastix [TT] began trolling tephroticGladius [TG] –-
 
TT: I think I'll take you up on your invitation.
TT: Let's meet.

By the time a few dozen of Eutko's nine-day weeks have passed on the godforsaken, desolate rock, Dave is grateful for what he considers to be the carpenter drones' crowning achievement—the subterranean complex that has emerged from the conglomeration of basements into a kind of elaborate common space. Most of the population has holed itself below ground for the winter now that the harsh season of the hivernal solstice has begun, and from its ignominious origins as a brutalist cavern carved from permafrost and rock, it has evolved into a bustling town in its own right, separate from the stiff formality of the surface. There, only magistrates, bureaucrats, and functionaries go about their business, filing papers and electronic records for a seemingly endless constellation of departments of the Empire.

Below ground, it's entirely different. The undercity is loose and casual, and despite its size it reminds Dave of Houston more than any other place—certainly more than the estrangement and isolation of Alternia. At all hours, its atmosphere is something like a bazaar, with thriving informal economies, street stalls selling food and technology and hivehold appliances, old Empire-approved favourites and grey-market goods alike. New inventions for coping with the chilly weather are especially popular, too: when an exploratory dispatch comes across the snowberry, an edible fruit with an intensely sweet taste and a fiendish caffeine kick, snowberry cassina quickly overtakes the stale, bitter, oil-slick standby, Alternian instant coffee, in popularity.

Among the heady aroma of brewed snowberry, fried dumplings, and habitation—he'd forgotten how much he missed the savory-sweet tang of the city, after so long in the sterilized atmosphere of the ship—Dave feels at home. Better still, now that military duties have subsided to the point where a good half of the population is superfluous, a more familiar kind of society has emerged, and for the first time in almost half his life he feels like he belongs somewhere.

Lost in your own thoughts again?
jesus how long have you been hiding behind my shoulder leldon

Dave half-winces at himself for how automatically the name comes to him. He almost wants to back time up and do it again, to purposefully trip over the name, but then that hasn't been his purview for what feels like—what is—half a lifetime. In the end, he resorts to a lame wink. Rose does him the courtesy of acting normal, like it isn't desperately fucked up that they can barely refer to each other by their own names, now.

She smiles, and Dave can't decide if it's her being polite or the worst slight he's suffered to date.

I told you I was coming.
ok fine yeah
but some of us like a moment of quiet during our thinking time
couldnt you tell from the like meditative aura of peace around me that i was having a moment
there were like max two minutes before i bid the world a fuck you sayonara and ollied into nirvana
didnt anyone tell you thats rude
Unfortunately for you, I have never placed a high priority on doing as others say.
Alas, your mortal candle shall remain unextinguished, so long as I sit here and fan the fire. What were you thinking about?
see heres the great part in the conversation when we get to sigh and talk about the old days like were a couple of nursing home inpatients sitting on the porch drinking sweet tea
(idk if you remember but the old days in question here are the kind where they made tea with leaves and underpaid labour and not like the discarded asshusks of recycled dead bug baby)
(whose fucking bright idea was that)
(anyway never mind back to the conversation were going to have when we get sent to the old folks home)
remember the old days i say
you say yeah the old days sure were the days and we both share a laugh but then i look at you really seriously and im like
wrong old days asshole im not talking about the old days when everyone was racist im talking about the old days where your hot mom was a badass troll revolutionary
Another vision.

Rose's eyes spark with curiosity—she can't help but want to hear more of the troll that was-would-be-could-have-been her mother, somewhere else, some other time in some other universe very far from where she is now, even as she knows that they are not the same, they were never the same.

ok dont look at me like that
never mind fuck that lets talk about the racist old days instead
you know the underground here kind of reminds me of houston when you conveniently set aside the fact that the walls are literally carved out of a chunk of frozen dirt
also the fact that the entire planet is frozen fucking dirt
also that you cant get any quality tex mex but whos keeping track right
Indeed. But your point still strikes true, I think. After Alternia and our sweeps aboard a spaceship, this town is far closer indeed to approximating anything like Earth.
That said, don't think you're going to successfully worm your way out of explaining yourself that easily.
The vision, Dave.
goddamn it
alright i get it jeez have a little patience will you
see the thing about the visions thing is well
you know ive always told you when there was something big, something new that you hadnt heard already
reason i stopped doing that is because nothing was new, just the same story playing on repeat
i swear i heard vantas the elders preachy orations so many times i could probably start my own seminary
karkats grandpa died for our sins
haha wow sucks to be him
yeah no kidding spread the word and ill give you a very important piece of paper and a funny square hat
i feel like even that sounds better than sitting in a highblood cathedral and having some terrifying crusty juggalo lecture you about magnets but man who the fuck even knows whats going on in their heads
So you haven't had any new visions for some time.
Do you have any idea why that might be?
yeah hang on im getting there
right so everything was stuck on repeat
same story every day
big man vantas, then terezis hot lawyermom, then my bro generally getting frisky with the cultural knowhow on your troll mom
macking on her with crazy religious slams because apparently thats what gets you laid in ancient troll culture
did you know your mom proposed pale bro matrimony to him by playing tears of a troll rapper
Paragons of taste, the both of them.
their lives are so much more entertaining than poppop vantas doing the nasty with a catgirl
ok gross pretend i never said that
anyway
point is
after all this repetition
after all of it happens again and again the same way i started to realize it felt a lot like something else ive dealt with
...
Oh my god.

Rose looks like she's been struck through-and-through by a lightning bolt. She sits straight as an arrow, eyes and lips grave, and looks straight at Dave.

yeah

It is one thing to dream of long-dead ancestors, to see their spectres intersect with his mind in crisscross, flitting in and out of view in line with the dark, doom-laden prophesies coming in tow, Dave thinks. It is one thing to know as an absolute baseline, as the most minimal of cosmic signifiers, that forebears whose dusty once-trod paths he could not but retread were those to railroad him onto an inescapable path. What not even Aradia could have foretold, though, among all her instruments of augury and soothsaying and of mantic sight, is that his duty is not as a simple follower but as a leader, a forebear of rebellions already fought and of those yet to be completed. His is the duty to file through the lost dead ends of time, to travel across them like a turntable's needle, to excise those not meant to end where they do and to end those that freerun for too long and to snap back and forward to pick exactly the right sequence of events so that when all is said and done it's all complete it's all in line the future can continue without any further interference but him and he is the future and the past and he cannot keep making mistakes—

TG: if we make mistakes then dead daves start piling up
TG: and dead daves are the enemy remember

In his dream, he rises from a bloodstained bed.

Chapter Text

"That's what they call being at the helm, these days. The lane to the land of the dead."

—Motoko Kusnag, Helmseer of the Laughing Man (later executed)

For sweeps he is dreaming. He sleeps like he's lost, deep in the belly of a mountain, like something small hidden deep inside the twists and whorls of a cavern of darkness. It isn't warm, isn't comforting; there are stabbing chills attacking his arms and legs, little agonies skipping up his nerves like a game of hopscotch, and a feeling of heaviness in his mind, as if it's holding too much, holding a world on its shoulders that doesn't belong. If he could push the weight from his mind and unburden himself, maybe he could think, but there's no moving the powerful suppressant, the mechanical darkness looming over his cortex and bending the very concept of thought to its own will.

There's no escape, not that he knows of, and even if he did he wouldn't be able to use the knowledge, not in the prison he's been boxed into; it's a cage that's so small that it feels like an open field. He'd heard that before, that after spending seasons in sensory deprivation you can't tell whether you're locked in place or completely free. It's another morsel of knowledge that, for all it might reside within him, can't do a thing when it's locked inside the system with him.

So the dreaming continues, a quiet thrum, a background process in a far larger machine. He barely even notices the brief moments when he's woken, when they perform their routine diagnostics, when they adjust his neural jacks, or when he's moved from second chair on the New Brutte to the helm of the Annihilator-class Lucriz. They're tiny blips of input like any other, like the binary switches that rattle up his arms and legs and shiver down his spine. In time, the tiny fragments of him that remain forget to notice the difference in anything from one moment to the next, and time starts to lose its meaning. It could easily have been dozens of sweeps of the same, rhythmic push-pull of the machine.

His body is another story. Pain casts a shadow everywhere, and the fits and seizures wrack the wasted husk of what remains; pain is where what is left of him resides when his mind kicks him out. And in those sweeps of black dreams pain is what has pushed him from one image to the next, from one thought to another. He feels the stabs of foreign material invade him, the cold metal rivets driven through his spine, the rough incisions where fibrous tubes slither into his bloodstream. Pain becomes his binding force, and it is all he believes is left of him, until the day it isn't anymore.

His brain has been off limits to him for so long that he doesn't bother trying to break back in. There's a cyclical process that circles through his neurons, some deeply ingrained program winding in from somewhere—someone?—else, and it arrests all prospects of escape. A closed loop, after all, leaves no points of entry, and he can't disturb it, not unless there's a tripwire to allow a change in the system.

One day, there's a tripwire.

It begins the same way every day does—the same hum of electricity coursing through his nerves like they're powerlines, the same dream of the dark, overwhelming pressure weighing him down. The constant prickles of pain dance through synapses, spreading metastatically from fingertip to crown, as they always have, as they always do. So when the system changes, when the tripwire fires, it's so quiet among the noise, so vague and indistinct, that he can barely hear it, but it's there. A quiet voice, calling from some point in the future, whispers into the pieces of Sollux Captor that remain and in that moment, he is invincible.

It's never been that way before; in the past, in his adolescence, the voices of the imminently deceased always instilled in him a sense of powerlessness. Those were the voices that taught him that nothing he ever did would alter the deterministic path set into place by a mechanism far larger than anything he could have imagined; those were the voices of his friends and rivals. He still remembers the unmistakable tenor first of Aradia's, then of Feferi's voice calling out, resounding through the impermeable veil of his subconscious. He could do nothing but listen as the voice grew in anger, in desperation, reaching an intolerable, agonizing zenith before the echoing silence.

This time, Sollux decides, it's going to be different. And he decides it, too, nerves surging with purpose, an impulse sluicing from the base of his spine and right to his brain. Suddenly, wresting control from the system isn't impossible anymore, and with a final circuit, the loop breaks, diffusing a terrific shriek of torment to everything Sollux could fathom as belonging to him. Except now he's something greater. There are ghosts in his machine, brains one through fifteen loyally reporting their alien data in illegible formats to him and in the moment it doesn't even matter, nothing matters but the simple fact that Sollux is the one in control.

His friends will die: this Sollux knows, and it leaves him with two options. His first is to do nothing, and continue running the ship; it will be a long and very lonely life. Perhaps, down the line, some descendant of Karkat's, or of Feferi's, could come again, and change everything. Perhaps they could change the world in a way that his friends might never. His second option is to fight; he will be found out, and he will die, but he will leave his mark, a swath of devastation through the Empire, before doing so.

Sollux has never been able to decide betwen two options before, but today, he decides, is a day for firsts. He tallies his tools, and sets to work at overriding the ship. To no one in particular, he issues his first words:

let's fucking d0 this.

When Rose is in the company of Others—Others being a catchall term which she's developed over the sweeps to refer to anyone who is not immediately inclade, and which could only truly carry its proper shade of meaning when uttered with the withering politesse that only Rose can muster (and it really is only her, in this world, where her coworkers, even should their wit, intellect, and capability for social tact be combined, have all of the subtlety of an Imperial Fleet destroyer), and also which, because of the previously stated difficulty for anybody to come up with anything like half the amount of competence with these kinds of things as Rose Lalonde, is really only comprehensible to one other person within the galaxy limits—she doesn't speak much. Mostly listens. This confuses her colleagues, who are used to the whining, needling temperaments of wannabe tyrants, who require a time-out every fifteen minutes to gorge their ego on something or—more typically—someone, and their confusion, more often than not, tends to resolve into relief because interacting with her fails to be the existential headache they have come to expect from the seadwelling caste.

Today, she's meeting with Others. The remainder of the Colonial Council—a group of idiots, but at the very least loyal idiots, who take to her detailed, precise orders with aplomb—has been dismissed, to make way for a much more prestigious, distinguished category of Other, a visitation by the woman now serving as Rose's direct superior, which turns out to be the only kind of Other worth giving the vaguest fraction of a fuck about, in Rose's mind.

This is the dilemma, as Rose sees it: when being granted an audience with this particular species of Other, the Other distinguished enough to send every other Other in her room scrambling, the kind of Other that is only commissioned when something of actual gravity and importance is occurring in the Empire, it can only ever mean two things. The first is that somehow, her affiliation with mutants, revolutionaries, and ne'er-do-wells has been discovered, and that her arrest, public trial, and grisly execution are in the post. The second is almost entirely the opposite.

Colonel Leldon, how would you like to captain an Annihilator?

It takes all of the composure Rose can muster to respond to Proconsul Pontix with anything beyond a wild-eyed, disbelieving gape. Pilara Pontix is an imposing troll at baseline: her symbolhight alone commands respect, with a storied lineage of ancestors claiming right of the Tyrian Throne during the electoral epochs between fuchsia-blooded heiresses. For a moment, Rose focuses on the elaborately-embroidered symbol on the Proconsul's dress uniform, a stylized hydra rising from seafoam. This does not help: the knowledge that she has successfully emerged from a childhood spent wrangling a titanic sea serpent does little to allay any illusions might have that Pontix is anything but fucking terrifying. Rose manages a polite (if slightly strained) disbelief:

A what?
An Annihilator, Leldon. I do hope you are familiar with the vessel, seeing as you served aboard one for the better part of two sweeps; it would be such a shame for a the drudgery of bureaucracy to have laid waste to your promising mind. There's no joy in milling the brightest minds in the galaxy into meatloaf after they've been tragically stricken by juvenile dementia.
An Annihilator.
Of course, I understand the significant honour and prestige that accompanies such a station, and I would, of course, perform the role to the best of my abilities.
But if I may, Proconsul, a question?
Go ahead.
Why choose me? I am just barely over twelve sweeps old, and have only just begun my term here as Director of the Colonial Council. I know there are others with dozens, if not hundreds of sweeps of experience in the military. Would such an appointment not be exceedingly hasty?
I'll be honest with you, Colonel. Given that you are one of the many br&-new colonial leaders under my jurisdiction, I am acutely aware of the fact that we have barely had the time to trade more than a formal greeting. I know little of you personally, so the only way I can determine your fitness for the work is through the recommendations of others.
Even if I cannot personally vouch for your eligibility, I am, you may have noticed, literate & capable of reading what Admiral Erzbet has to say on the matter of your promotion, which is, & I quote:
"Every moment Colonel Leldon spends planetside is a moment where the Empire is taking one of its most invaluable assets & pailing it, vigorously & to everyone's detriment, behind a goddamn toolshed. Her sheer technical knowledge & ironclad military record is utterly fucking wasted on the frozen piece of shit where she's currently stationed. She's no better off there than if she were directing a squadron of idiot wigglers in Troll Starcraft."
There you have it, Leldon. Certainly not the words I'm used to hearing from Erzbet's mouth, but then I rarely hear many recommendations for anything but the culling block, anymore.
What do you say?

Something about Pontix's speech—perhaps it's the piece about Troll Starcraft—sends a branching bolt of uncertainty down her spine that roils her guts, and the obvious connection to Sollux that she makes before she can help herself is a terrific return stroke that thunders ruthlessly back into her mind. But what else can she do? She knows as well as anyone that there is no such thing as an offer, here: the Empire's military is a ladder that one climbs as quickly as possible, to avoid the fire that burns below, always threatening complacency, always threatening anything but climbing as quickly as possible. Rose answers in the only way that she can.

When can I start?

Pontix looks at Rose dead in the eyes and grins.

When the news spreads to her circle of acquaintances that she has received a new, highly prestigious appointment, reviews are mixed.

CG: WHAT THE UNHOLY DIVINE ASSFUCK, LALONDE?
CG: WHEN I SIGNED OFF ON GETTING CONSIGNED TO THIS GLACIAL BACKWATER SHITHEAP OF A COLONY, I WAS DOING SO UNDER THE *EXPRESS FUCKING UNDERSTANDING* THAT THERE WOULD BE SOMEONE AT THE TOP OF THE FOOD CHAIN HERE WHO WOULD GIVE MORE THAN THE SLIGHTEST FRACTION OF A SHIT ABOUT ME, AND, MORE IMPORTANTLY, TEREZI, DAVE, AND ARADIA.
CG: I DON'T GET IT. I FEEL BETRAYED, ROSE.

GC: 4 PROMOT1ON? >:O
GC: ROS3, TH1S 1S 1NCR3D1BL3 N3WS! CL34RLY TH3 3MP1R3 UND3RST4NDS TH4T YOUR T4L3NTS 4R3 B31NG W4ST3D OV3R H3R3
GC: BUT JUST YOU W41T 4ND S33, 1LL SHOW TH3M SOON3R OR L4T3R
GC: YOU M1GHT H4V3 TH3 UPP3R H4ND TH1S T1M3, ROS3! BUT DONT TH1NK OUR FR13NDLY COMP3T1T1ON 1S OV3R Y3T >:]

TG: getting bumped up and right off this planet huh
TG: smooth moves lalonde youre going on up the food chain now
TG: send me a postcard from the troll white house

CC: Just as planned!
CC: Gl'bgolyb says )(–EY, by t)(e way. 38)

It unsettles her: after so much division, so many rifts and fallouts that have split her first—in the game—from the world at large, from her childish hopes and dreams, from her mother, and second, with the indiscriminate cleaving of her clade into pieces by the Alternian war machine, she fears the consequences of another partition leaving her alone in the galaxy, fighting a futile battle for this stupidly noble fantasy of a revolution that she often can't will herself to believe will ever happen, for all she's fought to keep it afloat in her mind. But for all that she's damned if she does, it's a hell of a better kind of damned than if she doesn't.

Perhaps worse, though, than Karkat's reaction—a blatant, shallow enragement that at least feels more honest, more viscerally authentic than anyone else's response—is the bizarrely bland missive of support she gets from Dave. Since their conversation in the heart of the colony, when he revealed to her the newest development in his dreams, he's been distant, dispassionate. It's nothing new—she's had plenty of times where the distance between them has grown wider, where he's spent his hours among Aradia, tight with the trust of common blood (a different kind of common blood, the kind that she and Dave will never share again), but it's never been like this. He's cut his chains to the real world, now, and more and more it is the world of dreams that takes precedence. He says nothing about his dreams anymore, beyond that he has them. Rose's greatest fear now, she thinks, is not that she is going to be separated from Dave, but that it has already happened, and she is simply waiting for the other shoe to drop.

On the coldest day of winter, a ferry vessel deorbits to Eutko at the first sign of twilight and informs her that the Annihilator-class vessel Lucriz awaits her command. Rose takes her leave of the colony that night. She says goodbye to no one.

Once the Empire has plucked the newly-promoted Rear Admiral Rozaya Leldon from her station as Director of the colony's Colonial Council, it does not take long for her remaining planetside associates to be drafted into the next military dispatch. Dave, Karkat, and Aradia are berthed aboard the Pompei, an Orphaner-class destroyer escort that accompanies the Skipio, where Terezi finds herself assigned.

For all that she has always wanted the opportunity to practise law outside the narrow, more tedious realm of battleship law, which mostly involves the court-martialing and swift execution of anyone suspected of shirking their duties to the Empire, Terezi is unsure of what to think about her new placement on the Skipio. The Skipio is a Justicar-class vessel, an oddity among the many breeds of Alternian spaceships in that a majority of them are staffed by trolls largely unaffiliated with the military. On one hand, she finds this preferable, as the role of a Justicar-class vessel is to travel from system to system and administer the full breadth of Alternian law—in other words, functioning as a fully mobile circuit court. Terezi feels that she'll be at home in an environment like this, which will allow her to put all her talents as a proper assaultorney to use. But the drawbacks to living aboard a law ship quickly become clear. Foremost among them is Ghuiye Fierry, Merry Metropolitan of the Skipio and the parish Chaplain of the Capricious Catechism. From the time the dread Chaplain greets the new arrivals on board, Terezi can tell that she has made a grave misjudgment.

WHAT IS COOKING, BOYS AND GRILLS???
IT IS ABOUT MOTHER FUCKING THYME TO WELCOME YOU INTO THE NEWEST DARK CARNIVAL IN TOWN.
NOW CAN WE UP AND THANK THE LAUGHING LARDS ABOVE FOR THIS MIRACLE?

A chorus of raucous indigobloods supply a raucous whoop, whoop! and break into a disorganized cheer. Terezi has never dreaded anything so much in her life.

Fierry speaks with the fervour of a true believer; his cackling and his whooping churn the crowd into a riotous mess, and if Terezi at eight sweeps, Terezi the Church Law professlaughterer's pet could have seen this, she would have reacted with a pure, academic fascination. Here, in the thick of a glorified Mirthful Church mass, heavy with opiate haze and stale-sweet soda and salt-spicy blood, she wants nothing more to be out of this place, to be back in the Tarqin in the simplistic military courts drawing and quartering deserters with a mercenary ease. Fierry has only just started.

THAT THERE IS ALL SOME BULGHUR HARSH MOTHER FUCKING WHIMSY, IS IT NOT, MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS.
AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT, LITTLE LAUGHSASSINS? ARE YOU UP AND HAVING THE KNOWLEDGE WELL AND GOD DAMN ENSCONCED IN YOUR PANCAGES ABOUT WHAT THE MIRACULOUS MOTHER FUCKING NUGSTUFF IS?
THAT IS MY BREAD AND BUTTER.
MY MOST HUMOROUS OF HARLEQUINS, MY MOST FARCICAL FUNNYMEN, I ASSEMBLE YOU HERE TODAY BECAUSE THE MIRTHFUL MESSIAHS HAVE ENTRUSTED US WITH A SOLEMN GOD DAMN SERVICE.
THEY DOUGHNUT HAVE THE TOLERATION IN THEIR ENDURANCE SACKS FOR ANY OF THE MOTHER FUCKING BLASPHEMY THAT LAYS THE SCOURGE OF FALSEHOOD ON A TROLL FROM NUG TO NUB. I TELL YOU THAT THEY DOUGHNUT GOT IT IN THEIR SPONGES TO UP AND BE ALL FORGETFUL AS FUCK OF THE HERESIES THAT WOULD BE ASSIGNING THE NAME OF LIES TO OUR MIRACLES.
FOR GOD'S STEAK, WE ARE GETTING ON OUR MOTHER FUCKING ASSEMBLY IN THIS MOST ROWDY OF RUMPUSBLOCKS BECAUSE IT IS OUR GOD DAMN DUTY TO ROOT OUT THESE MOST UNFUNNY OF CHUCKLEFUCKS, THESE MOST MUTINOUS OF MISCREANTS, AND SHOW THEM THE WHIMSY OF THE HILARIOUS HARBINGERS OF THE PROPHETS.
AND I TELL YOU, MY BRETHREN IN SUBJUGGLATION. I TELL YOU, O JOKERS OF MY MOST PIOUS POSSE, WE WILL NOT DISAPPOINT.
WE WILL NOT DIS A MOTHER FUCKING POINT.
LETTUCE PRAY!

The throng of highbloods goes wild. A chaotic, disorganized back-and-forth emerges, with one group shouting “magnets!” and another responding “HOW DO THEY MOTHER FUCKING WORK?” Even some of the tealbloods have been riled up by the electric charisma of the crowd and follow along. Terezi says nothing, but fidgets impatiently with her collar; she can do nothing else but wish for the end.

The atmosphere of a ship run by a subjugglator is dreamlike and rarefied, almost divorced from the reality of the outside world: here there is no recital of the Alternian Creed, few references to the Empire and fewer still to the Empress. Had Terezi not grown so ambivalent to and disillusioned with the notion of such verbalized loyalty, she might find the cult's degree of dissociation from its ostensible ruler to be downright illegal! Instead, she wonders to herself exactly how long it will take her to be driven more mad by the fucking highblood clowns and the thick, stinking clouds of dope and the endless repetition of 'motherfucker' and the exasperating caprice of the Church than by the earworms of the Empire, those notoriously noxious chants that wind themselves so deep in a mind that it's rumoured that they're physically addictive. By the first morning, she thinks it's probably a wash.

By the second morning, she longs for the soothing, almost poetic rhythms of the Imperial Pledge of Fealty.

In between the multiple disjointed segments of daily mass, a bloated sickening mess of shoestring procedure that swallows up most of the night, Terezi sends anguished missives to Dave, Karkat, or Aradia. Relatively quickly, they develop a system for dealing with Terezi's unbelievably shitty misfortune, and take turns easing her existential torment by engaging her in idle conversation. Tonight Dave is on call for Terezi-grubsitting. Normally, this is her favourite arrangement, but the conversation quickly unravels into a more serious discussion.

TG: ok what time am i catching you
TG: is it before or after troll guy fieri gets up there and does his big bite caegar salad communion
TG: you promised me youd record it this time when he yells zesty and tosses the salad
-- gibbetCanard [GC] is an idle troll! --
TG: damn out of luck
TG: so uhh
TG: idk whats new today
TG: daily prophet report has some news that i gotta run by you though its not the escapades of your sexy justice momcestor
TG: kinda less fun than all that but still important
TG: no news is good news from megido she can vouch for zero immediate fatalities so far in our clade
TG: good work everyone for not succumbing to the total dumbassery of kicking the bucket yet
GC: D4V3 TH4T 3XPR3SS1ON OF YOURS H4S N3V3R STOPP3D B31NG K1ND OF GROSS
GC: 3V3N 1F 1T 1S 4 W3LCOM3 R3M1ND3R OF TH3 OBSCUR3 H3LL4 R4D HUM4N CULTUR3 SL4NG TH4T 1S S4DLY 3ND4NG3R3D 4ROUND TH3S3 P4RTS
GC: 4LSO NO TH3 CLOWNS 4ROUND M3 B3C4M3 4LL R3ST1V3 WH3N 1 TR13D TO T4K3 4 PHOTOGR4PH >:[
GC: SOM3TH1NG 4BOUT SC13NC3 B31NG 4G41NST TH3 NUGSTUFF 4LL UP 1N OUR MOTH3RFUCK1NG M1R4CL3S, 1 HON3STLY STOPP3D L1ST3N1NG
TG: fuck clowns man
TG: whatever we dont have to talk about them
TG: this is a guaranteed juggalo free zone
GC: Y3S! TH4NK YOU, TH4T 1S 4PPR3C14T3D
GC: 4NYW4Y, YOU S41D SOM3TH1NG 4BOUT TH3R3 B31NG N3WS!
TG: yeah dont get your hopes up though its not exactly worth booking a fruity rumpus partytown over
TG: its important though so for all i feel like an asshole for commandeering a destressing session i sorta need to ask for a pretty heavy favour from you
GC: HUH
GC: W3LL, SUR3, 1F 1 C4N H3LP
GC: 4NYTH1NG TO T4K3 MY M1ND OFF OF MR Z3STYGR4P3S 4ND H1S PR34CH1NG
GC: WH4T DO YOU N33D M3 TO DO?
TG: so story goes like this aradia karkat and i have shit for clearance and were trying to figure out how to help me work past this one point in my dreams that ive been stuck on for like a solid equinox and a half
TG: heres the issue the only guy that can pull any of the shit wed need for research off the shelf is currently flicking his fins at ungrateful kids way back on alternia
GC: ...3R1D4N >:I
TG: yup but heres where it gets worse
TG: since we have to get our own book to him and since nobody we know can just you know call up their boss and be like hey i gotta hit the beaches on alternia for a couple weeks ill let you know when im good on tanning and im back in town
TG: it means were going to have to rely on someone we can trust to move in and out without attracting a lot of attention
GC: ........ >:I >:I >:I
GC: YOU C4N T3LL TH4T MY FL4P 1S V3RY D1SPL34S3D 4BOUT TH1S B3C4US3 1T 1S PURS3D ON BOTH S1D3S!
GC: 1SNT TH3R3 SOM3 OTH3R W4Y
TG: yeah i know i feel exactly the same way
TG: if there were another way i wouldnt be putting you up to this
TG: but youre the only one who can talk to her
TG: were all sitting here like a bunch of chumps when it comes to talking to vriska
TG: but youre like
TG: the serket whisperer
GC: TH4T 1S 4 L1TTL3 W31RD, D4V3
GC: BUT 1 SUPPOS3 TH3R3 1S NO 4LT3RN4T1V3 >:/
GC: 1 W1LL T4LK TO H3R, BUT 1M NOT GO1NG TO M4K3 4NY PROM1S3S

It fucking figures, Terezi thinks, that her misfortune would not end with Metropolitan Fierry, her insane boss with a passionate fetish for overseasoning his nutrient paste. It must simply have been insufficient, she is sure, for life to taunt her desire for something beyond the tedium of a military courtblock.

But what other recourse does she have? After morning mass, Terezi sits down to compose a missive to the very person she's been trying to avoid for half of her life. And for all she dreads the smugness, the finger-wagging arrogance, and—perhaps above all—the pathological need to make Terezi admit defeat, there's a certain part of her that has been aching for a way to bring the two of them back together. Now that her eyes are open, now that everything has been allowed to unfold another way, some of that dread recedes and gives way to an emotion she might tentatively term hope.

Early evening, says the clock. On Alternia, the sun's last rays would still be lingering on the horizon, casting deep shadows on the world, small pockets of safety between the licking flames of day. Here, it hardly matters: on a small Cavalreaper-class corvette sailing swiftly from the fringes of the Tollynine Arm into the heart of the Empire, only the cold, bare lighting of the spacecraft can separate waking hours from sleeping hours. Rose comes to in a dark respiteblock, stripped-down to the basics out of necessity on a vessel too small for a gravity ring.

Especially after a long time unaccustomed even to the basics of motion in low-gravity environments, her motions are jerky and clumsy as she zips herself out of the recuperacoon bag, and as she gets her bearings once again she rubs her eyes with grouchy exhaustion. Like most others in this microgravity environment, she's forgone the comforts of sopor in favour of the convenience of a short morning routine; the lack of gravitation prevents the hydrophobic substance from sloughing off properly, and can often lead to floating chunks of sopor loose throughout the entire spaceship. She'll suffer the pan-ache and the hangover for now.

From her window, Rose notes that their vessel has finally reached its desired orbit, and its tiny shadow glides slowly over the shining sheet-metal skin of the Lucriz. Everything in her life is déjà vu now, it seems—just a repetition of events and circumstances and locations that fill her guts with an expansive, unresolved mixture of comfort and dread. The Lucriz looks for all the world just like her prior berth—it is, after all, her mind supplies automatically—and for a moment, she is filled with the same fluttery suspense that she felt the first time, when she had left Alternia for the very first time.

But the feeling that overtakes her for the very first time when she boards the Annihilator-class behemoth, as she emerges from the corvette and into the hangar to behold the sea of trolls that now follow her every order, is a new one. For the first time, there is nobody else at her back, nobody who knows or could even fathom the extent of her, and at last she realizes this: Rose Lalonde is dead the second Brigadier Zenobe yields command of the Lucriz to Rear Admiral Rozaya Leldon.

The pomp and the circumstance of the transfer of command of a hiveship like this, a tactically significant component of the fleet, is an hours-long affair. As Rose glides through the hallways of the ship between the hangar and the habitation ring, an entourage first grows, dense and humid with the thick air of a thousand trolls breathing and, as the parade of enlisted soldiers and mechanics inches closer to the admiral's bridge—first through the topsy-turvy gravity of the elevator to the hab deck and later inside the slender rapid-transit traincars—shrinks to a clique of high-ranking officers. At last, the final few commanders and lieutenant-colonels split away to their quarters, leaving only Zenobe to pave the way to the bridge.

just through this door, admiral.

The admiral's command centre has a sort of alien aura of futurist splendour about it, Rose thinks. On one wall, bay windows stretch across the room from floor to high ceiling and allow simulated evening light to filter in, even as holograms overlaid atop them report dozens of updates on the status of the ship. At the admiral's chair, lavish furnishings drench the computers facing the windows, with a single centre console commanding the view, while a half-level below, several technicians mill about, alternating between typing on their own computers and muttering data and commands to each other.

Rose stands at the computer, and the weight of the conductor's baton rests in her hand. With a primal rush of pride, she presses the touchscreen to wake it from sleep—her first act as the captain of the ship—and that's when the message arrives:

TA: wow, it is ab0ut fucking time, lalonde.

Chapter Text

"Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for trollkind."

—Fleet Marshal Linkin Parcke, the Orphaner Antiokos (later executed)

TT: You mean to say that you've orchestrated all of this? The promotion, the letter of recommendation, everything?
TA: what kind 0f question is that, r0se, i mean what the fuck, can you maybe find it in y0ur collapsing and expanding bladder based vascular system t0 think about the w0rds you're saying t0 me?
TA: like a guy would generally appreciate it if y0u asked him how he's d0ing before demanding his abs0lutely-fucking-ironclad hacking credentials, y0u know?
TA: hi s0llux, it's go0d to see y0u, long time n0 send messages thr0ugh my direct fucking neural connecti0n to the hiveship, and hey speaking 0f which how are y0u doing, h0w is the enorm0us fucking supercomputer grafted t0 your think pan?
TA: 0h, and in case you still wanted an answer t0 your questi0n, yes, obvi0usly this is all my doing. exactly what kind 0f incompetent d0 you take me f0r. i get connected t0 one 0f the largest process0rs in the galaxy and you think the first thing i d0 is NOT g0ing to be t0 ro0t the shit out 0f it?
TT: It's good to see you again, Sollux.

Rose spends many of the next few nights in the whirling, dreamy state of mind that can only come of lost hope being resurrected as drastically and as suddenly as it was excised when the hope was lost in the first place. Even after three sweeps, Sollux is a missing part of her, somewhere deep in the scars and the tangled briar of her pusher. When she sits at the helm of the vessel, among the cursory commands and vector readjustments and the million fractured fragments of forgettable protocol and procedure aboard the vessel, Sollux is a bright spot of memory, each golden proclamation shimmering in her mind with a vivid, hyperreal clarity.

They remain in contact with the earnest eagerness of new lovers, and Rose wakes every evening with her headset computer still hanging off one horn. But while his synthesized voice (almost exact, Rose thinks to herself in her brief moments alone) never leaves her side, his body is another matter. Neither of them have the courage to bring up the obvious, at first. The helmsblock is scarcely mentioned, and when it is it is quickly discarded in favour of another topic, another strategizing session for the rebellion they now believe to be imminent. But that grows tiresome to Rose, who for all that she has Sollux all the time feels that he can never be there.

TT: Hey, Sollux, I want to see you.
TA: at your c0mmand, admiral smartass. what's up?
TT: That's not what I mean.

Rose begins a slow, determined march to the helmsblock, and Sollux makes a strange noise, something between the yowl of a strangled cat and a loud gasp of someone who's been punched straight in the lung. She does not stop.

TA: rose, n0.
TA: let's maybe establish some gr0und rules here before y0u go barging int0 my intimate rumpusblocks, maybe 0ne of these rules can be stay 0ut of the inner sanctum where my starcraft b0dy is lying in state slowly atr0phying into fucking mealpulp, d0 you think maybe that c0uld be one 0f the rules?
TA: oh wait, i forg0t, the helmsblock is my r0om which means i set the rules, and it turns 0ut that rule number one happens t0 be stay out 0f the goddamn helmsbl0ck, rose, what the fuck are y0u thinking!
TT: Why?
TT: Is it because you're afraid of what I might think when I see you?
TA: no shit, lal0nde, i'm afraid!
TA: you d0n't know what's inside there, you d0n't have a concept 0f what it could l0ok like. what it d0es lo0k like.
TA: shit, even *i* don't kn0w about what's inside anym0re, i turned off the viewp0rt because i didn't want to deal with it, why w0uld you want t0 fuck yourself up 0ver it even more?
TT: Because it isn't over yet.
TA: wait, what the literal shithive magg0ts rose, what d0es that even mean?

Before he can stop her—he can't stop her, he's just the ship, not the ship's captain—she rounds the corner to the final hallway. The dull silver of the machined metal walls gives way to gilded transistors, gilded panels, brilliant walls shimmering with the horror of possibility. Among the wiring, her eyes catch the unmistakable pulse of blood, and a thick yellow vessel erupts from the vast motherboards; Rose's heart catches in her throat, and she turns forward again with a nervous shuddering breath. Small steps, deep breaths. She places her fingers in the print reader, and the door gives way with a heavy, reluctant hiss.

She thinks back to the conversations from their final days on Alternia, his doomspeaking and the barefaced terror in his eyes and in his shaking body as he told her the rumours of what the helm truly was, behind the Empire's stylized patina. Perhaps she was unsure of what to expect, but in some ways, seeing him like this is gentler than the hearsay she'd steeled herself to see vindicated: when she surveys the room she finds Sollux Captor at its heart, in possession of all four limbs, and without a nightmarish bramble of slime mold clutching him in a Gordian knot. It is a small kindness to see him whole like this, even if the cables ribboning from his spine and arms and skull seize her stomach with unease, even if his body sits emaciated in this cage of nerves and wire, even if there is no way that they can ever return to the way things once were.

She presses a soft kiss to his lips, cracked and dry; they are no different than the rest of his ruined body. It is a small kindness to see him whole.

They don't talk about it afterwards. Sollux thinks about it, from time to time, which is just about all the time because the unfathomable fucking quantity of circuits whispering at him from all corners of his mind don't often have anything better to do once they've figured out how to automate every last part of running the ship, but he thinks it's probably better not to mention it, especially as their work begins to pile up from all sides—both in safeguarding their companions in sedition, and in commanding a starship and a hundred thousand trolls.

Sometimes, in the middle of the morning, Rose will slip out of her respiteblock and into the helmsman's quarters. She doesn't speak. Sollux doesn't either, doesn't protest as she puts her lips to his, holds his limp, fragile arms like long-forgotten relics. There's a desperation, an urgency to the way she holds his hot-blooded body to her, like somehow he could extinguish the cold from within her veins forever if she just held him long enough. But after that, she always returns to her chambers, and there he is, chained to his servers, like he always will be. They don't talk about it afterwards.

These days, there's always something on his mind besides what he's thinking about, the way he can compartmentalize and delegate, now that his mind encompasses not just the wall-sockets of silicon but cultured neural tissue that extends him for miles, for enough memory for a million years. One of the first things he'd done once he'd taken control of the ship from the inside, long ago, was lock away the voices of the imminently deceased in their own little subroutine, muted and shunted off far away to Bulkhead 46 Coprocessor, waiting for meaningful input before it could wake from sleep. When he hears its insistent whine that something's gone wrong, at first he doesn't remember its significance, and wonders idly what could possibly go so sideways in Bulkhead 46 that its paltry plate of neurons would think to raise a red alarm. Then the recollection strikes him, and his blood runs cold.

What more is there to do? He tells Rose—and then, on her advice, forwards the information to Terezi, Dave, Karkat, and Aradia. While the delay in communication means they won't receive the news until it is far, far too late to do anything about it, it's the closest thing that they'll get to advance notice.

CURRENT techneAsterias [CTA] RIGHT NOW posted memo on board b2ssIGV2ZXJ5MG5lIGZsaXAgb3V0IG4wdywgd2UgYXJlIHNvLCBzMCBmdWNrZWQu.
 
CTA: stop everything y0u are doing, keep y0ur word traps c0mpletely shut, and tune in to the s0llux emergency broadcast system, y0ur one st0p shop f0r telling you precisely h0w completely every single best laid plan 0f ours has g0ne to shit with a single c0up de grace.
CTA: there are a shitload 0f moving parts in this devel0ping situation, and i really don't have the patience to facedive int0 the shit that will inevitably your feeble attempts t0 understand by your atr0phied thought sp0nges, so i'll put it in a way that even you mere tr0lls will understand. it goes like this:
CTA: by my last calculati0n approximately tw0 seconds ag0, we are at least fifteen different kinds of dead.
PAST tephroticGladius [PTG] 112 HOURS AGO responded to memo.
PTG: wtf
PTG: ok so like not that i dont appreciate you letting us all know your brain didnt turn into soup when you got fitted for the helm and shipped out and everything
PTG: like seriously good on you buddy ill have to get you a tshirt that says "i survived the imperial helmsman program"
PTG: but i kind of wish that youd let us know what made you flip your shit instead of us having to wait another four and a half days biting our fingernails like a bunch of fucking chumps
PAST gibbetCanard [PGC] 112 HOURS AGO responded to memo.
PGC: D4V3, B3 N1C3!
PGC: H3Y SOLLUX, 1T 1S GOOD TO H34R FROM YOU, 3V3N 1F YOUR N3W QU1RK 1S K1ND OF DUMB >:?
PGC: WH4T 1S TH3 S1TU4T1ON
CTA: 0kay, so let it n0t be said that i am not kind 0f a frondstr0king dumbass sometimes.
CTA: but the situati0n is this: for the first time in sweeps, the v0ices of the imminently deceased decided it was time t0 send me a new and improved message that 0ur lives are basically screwed.
CTA: i heard some0ne in the voices that i rec0gnized.
CTA: vriska's dead, guys.
PGC: SH1T

It's a dark, quiet evening when it happens, crescent moons razor-thin and almost invisible in the sky. Vriska's squatting in her old hive, a magnificent old ruin now, its immense and immanent doomsday mechanism once suspended between Equius's castle and hers reduced to rubble in the great courtyard. She remembers as she's hiding out here how much she hated it, in the time before Sgrub turned everything end-over-end, creating new opportunities and opening new pathways in her mind, of the different futures she might take, and of the things she'd do differently this time around.

But despite all this, she is still waking up in a shellshocked ruin, with only a portable generator and a worn blanket keeping the icy night at bay. When her alarm goes off and Vriska comes to, she wonders if she has made a mistake at some point to bring her here, but then she remembers. Of course, she thinks with a dramatic roll of her eyes. Aiding and abetting a revolutionary cause can be so tiring sometimes, she thinks, lugging herself out of bed and over to what maybe once was a desk where she's plotted a makeshift map detailing her rendezvous coordinates.

She cranes her head over to look at the time. It's early still, but she knows that timing is everything on an illicit information drop like this. Eridan can't go unaccounted for extended periods of time like she can (or at least does); his prestigious military post is what allows him to remain planetside at all, but adult presence on Alternia is highly regulated, and any anomaly could quickly unravel into a fiasco. That kind of stress puts anyone on edge, so when there's a loud bump Vriska whips around with a start. Once she's satisfied that it's just a rock tumbling outside, she relaxes again.

There's a canteen of stale coffee on the table; Vriska shakes it to assess its contents. It'll be enough; breakfast is simple by necessity when you're on the lam. It's always essential to keep the acrid edge to it, and Vriska suspects she wouldn't find it quite so effective if it were halfway appetizing, so she just pours herself a mug of the oily substance and knocks it back as quickly as she can.

The first sign she receives that something is wrong is when a police dispatch bursts through the door. The loud crack of the hinge snapping alerts her, and her eyes go wide with panic. She has mere seconds before they reach her, and her thoughts cast about for ideas of what to do. Everything's a muddle: the coffee still hasn't taken effect, and adrenaline can only go so far. But what other choice does she have? There's no time to deliberate, no time to wait for backup—as she weighs her options, stormtroopers' boots resound against the steps, becoming louder with every passing second.

Four officers decked out in equipment emerge from the stairwell—Vriska can't believe she was stupid enough to corner herself in the tower—and she stands there dumbly, paralyzed. A rush of awareness comes to her and she realizes she does not have her weapon out. But she can't draw in time for it to pose a threat. "Freeze, APD!" one shouts, the other corkscrewing her into the ground, moving with blinding quickness and an almost mindless determination. Vriska tries resisting, but it's no use; there are no god tiers or echeladders now, and against four armed trolls, she doesn't stand a chance in a fair fight.

But this isn't a fair fight, either. In a last ditch effort to escape, she draws her fluorite octet, scattering them against the ground. Five tumble forward and stop on the cold, hard ground, while the other three continue clattering against the floor to the edge of the stairway. They almost languidly roll over the lip and their tinny sound against the staircase echoes against the walls, but the five are enough for her first gambit. With a burst of strength, and fortune, she throws the police officer off of her and snaps to her feet. There's a brief opening in their ranks, and she takes advantage of the moment to leap down the stairs, skipping steps by leaps and bounds. For a moment she thinks she's home free, but when the last three dice come to rest at the base of the stairwell, her luck runs dry. Upstairs, an officer takes aim, and a well-aimed shot pierces her leg.

With a loud yelp, Vriska falls forward, going limp like a ragdoll as her body slides down the remainder of the staircase unceremoniously. She goes unconscious like a light-switch going out as her head strikes a step awkwardly, the tips of her horns shattering off like chipped porcelain.

When she comes to once again, the police have her in their custody, and with that she knows that this is it. It isn't until later, when she hears them mutter to each other about the map detailing her rendezvous that she had left on the desk, that a hot, wet, revolting horror grips her blood pusher.

Her capture, she knows now, is the beginning of the end for her friends.

It gets worse, in every way they can imagine. Eridan is detained at the rendezvous point a few hours later, heretical books in hand, and Equius and and John are court-martialed within a few days, the suspicion of proximity wrapping them up in the terrible, inexorable bramble of Alternian military justice. It is all Terezi can do to request a reassignment from the nightmarish, honk-filled halls of the Skipio to the prosecution to Alternia's own military tribunals; if nothing, it brings her closer to the epicentre of the rapidly-growing crisis and gives her some sense of control among the chaos.

The first thing she does after making it planetside is pay a visit to Vriska.

H3Y!
G1V3 M3 4 MOM3NT W1TH TH3 D3F3ND4NT

Terezi glares sightlessly at the brutish greenblood grunt looming nervously at the cell door. He stares back dumbly and shrugs, like he doesn't understand what she's just told him. She sighs incredulously, shoulders falling, and the ornately engraved sword held limply in her left hand clatters against the stone floor. She approaches him, taking off her glasses and pocketing them carefully. He falters. His orders are to remain at his post until relieved, but her white-hot icicle eyes are melting away his resolve very quickly.

She speaks again, this time quietly.

1 S41D
G1V3 M3 4 MOM3NT W1TH TH3 D3F3ND4NT

The guard shivers violently and, his fear finally overriding his simple-minded programming, he lumbers away to another corner of the building.

Terezi turns toward the defendant.

Hey, Pyrope.
H3Y

They've been waiting for what seems like sweeps to really talk to each other again, but Terezi can't even will herself to be surprised that these are the circumstances they're meeting under, with Vriska hauled in by the Empire as a common criminal. She looks the part, too. They don't let her wear the artificial arm in here—it's a small gesture, given Vriska's strong enough without it, but it's just another small denial of dignity undertaken by the Empire as a show of authority over its prisoners. Without it, Vriska seems incomplete—the salty metallic tang of the metal missing in her olfactory picture.

Terezi frowns. There's a certain eternity to this moment, too; now that they're finally in the same room together, they can't seem to come up with anything to say to each other. The room, too, is cold and oppressive and all harsh-lit fluorescence, boxing them in like dessicated shadows, the light entirely unlike the warm glow of the nighttime sky of her childhood. All of it leaves her at a loss. Words seem to lose their meaning for Terezi when there's so little she feels they can do, but then, she wonders if maybe this meeting doesn't have to end with just words. Newly reinvigorated, Terezi takes a seat at the threadbare table and speaks.

SO HOW 4R3 TH3Y TR34T1NG YOU 1N H3R3
NOT QU1T3 L1K3 C4PT41NS QU4RT3RS ON 4N 3X3CUTOR HUH
Could 8e worse, all things considered! They don't have me shackled to the wall. I could fucking kill for a cigarette, though.
Heh. I remember the first time I got disciplined for insu8ordin8tion fresh outta scripts. Admiral threw me in the 8rig for a week. I was scared shitless! I was sure he was going to push me out the airlock.
The Aquarius was one of those old-school space hulks, too, with the handcuffs chained to the wall. Pro8a8ly a refitted prison ship, from 8efore they didn't 8other with them anymore.
I h8ed that ship. Fuckin' dump.
YOUR3 N3V3R S4T1SF13D 4R3 YOU VR1SK4

She feigns exasperation, and Vriska flashes a dark grin in reply.

Nope!
GOOD! "4LW4YS S4T1SF13D" N3V3R GOT 4NYON3 OUT OF PR1SON
SO 1 DONT TH1NK NOW WOULD B3 TH3 B3ST T1M3 FOR YOU TO CH4NG3

When Terezi goes quiet for a moment, Vriska looks inquisitively over at her, but her purpose is made clear soon enough. After rooting through her sylladex for a half-empty pack of cigarettes and beat-up lighter, Terezi slides them across the table.

H3R3
1 STOL3 TH3M FROM D4V3

Vriska nods appreciatively, and in one smooth motion brings her lips to a cigarette, lights it, and takes a drag.

Man, Dave has terri8le taste. Next time, tell him to 8ring me a 8rand that doesn't suck.
R1GHT, 1M SO SORRY TO D1S4PPO1NT, HOW 3LS3 C4N 1 M4K3 YOUR ST4Y 1N TH3 4LT3RN14N PR1SON SYST3M MOR3 COMFORT4BL3
You can start 8y replacing the asshole who's always standing guard. Smells like an unloved load gaper.
1 S33 YOUV3 P1CK3D UP TH3 L1NGO TH4T 1S 4LL UP 1N TH3 BON4 F1D3 H1PP1TY W1TH TH3 B1G DOGS, VR1SK4
HOW M4NY COOL K1DS H4V3 YOU CONSORT3D W1TH 1N H3R3???
Guilty as charged! I joined a gang, too. Want to see my tattoo?
TH4T D3P3NDS ON WH3R3 1T 1S

Terezi waggles her eyebrows suggestively, and Vriska can't help but laugh. It's amazing how quickly they fall back on old habits, she thinks, habits they haven't had since they were six sweeps old, playing at being adults, at being cops and robbers before they even knew what it meant. Now they both know all too well, and it's the reason they're on opposite sides of the table.

H3Y
Yeah?
L3T M3 G3T TH4T CUFF OFF
Are you sure you want to do that, Terezi? It's illegal!
V34Y FUNNY VR1SK4
NOW COM3 H3R3

She strolls to the other side of the table. With a swipe of a stolen legal authorization card on the reader, Vriska's clasp comes apart and clatters onto the table, and she rubs the chafed skin on her wrist against her shirt with a sneer of discomfort as she gets to her feet unsteadily and stretches out her arm.

Thanks. I h8 those things.
N3XT T1M3 M4YB3 YOULL R3M3MB3R TH4T 4BOUT TH3M B3FOR3 G3TT1NG YOURS3LF 4RR3ST3D, DUMMY
It wasn't my fault. I was framed!
OH Y34H, 1 FORGOT 4BOUT TH4T
JUST 4 POOR L4W 4B1D1NG 1MP3R14L SUBJ3CT FR4M3D FOR UNS4NCT1ON3D C4HOOTS W1TH 4 KNOWN S3D1T1OUS 4G3NT
Grub scout's honour. You'll 8e my character witness, right?

This time it's Terezi's turn to laugh, but she stops abruptly halfway through, suddenly reminded of the loss it's taken to bring them here.

PROB4BLY 4 S4F3R B3T TH4N 4NYON3 3LS3
4T TH3 V3RY L34ST S4F3R TH4N 3QU1US
POOR GUY
Yeah. Never was much of one for sneaking around. Guess he got what he wanted in the end, though.
HOW 4BOUT YOU?
Huh?
H4V3 YOU GOTT3N WH4T YOU 4LW4YS W4NT3D?
Me? Shit, yeah. I don't think I could have asked for much 8etter than piloting my very own stolen ship and giving the good guys a chase to remem8er.
SORRY, TH3 SH1P H4S B33N 1MPOUND3D! YOU KNOW HOW MY BOSS LOV3S TO 1MPOUND TH1NGS
Psh. Doesn't matter. I've always wanted to take an Annihilator-class for myself. It's the perfect opportunity!
OH MY GOD VR1SK4, YOU C4NT JUST ST34L 4N 4NN1H1L4TOR
Sure I can. Try and stop me.
OK4Y

Terezi steps forward and plants a kiss to Vriska's lips, eyes shutting like light switches, and the feeling snaps them back to another time. It reminds Terezi of the old days, when the two of them worked as a team to bring down opponents, real or imagined. They would wake up right as the final rays of twilight sank under the horizon and stay out until the first signs of dawn, falling asleep at each other's backs, tools alternatively of war and friendship clasped in their arms. They can't be as close now as they were then—too much has happened, too much that can't be forgotten, even with the second chances they both had, and took—but they can try.

It's close, certainly, and Terezi can tell that Vriska remembers from the way she presses back, eager for more, but Terezi regains herself, eyes fluttering open again and pulling away. She can't help the shy smile on her face, though.

M4YB3 NOW 1SNT TH3 B3ST T1M3
Pro8a8ly not, 8ut I figure we could stand to put off the suicidal escape plot just a little longer.
DONT WORRY VR1SK4, 1LL G3T YOU OUT OF H3R3, ON3 W4Y OR 4NOTH3R
That's what I want to hear!
So tell me, Officer Pyrope. Am I free to go?
TH4TS COUNS3LLOR-C4PT41N TO YOU, CR1M1N4L SCUM!
TH3 DOOR 1S W41T1NG
Y3S, VR1SK4
YOU 4R3 FR33 TO GO

Vriska turns around and faces the door, feeling renewed and ready to take on the world. She's just about to launch into a conversation about some lighthearted thing or another when a half-gasp, half-grunt erupts from her lips. Her eyes roll down and see a long, thin sword driven straight into her back and through her chest, a bloom of blue blood encircling the wound.

It never could have been, Terezi knows as she holds the blade firm. Vriska could die slowly, subjected inevitably to torture, put under the agonizing sting of the mindworm as it would draw more and more secrets from the depths of her cortex—or she could die here, quickly and neatly, her lips forever sealed, her case file forever closed, everyone else walking free, the fear of discovery looming over their heads lessened by a clean kill. She does not apologize, nor does she forgive herself; there is no point in either anymore, not when she has seen what could have happened otherwise.

Vriska gasps again when the sword slides back out, a lance of blissful pain radiating from her heart, and the last thing Vriska hears as her consciousness fades to black is the rhythmic sound of Terezi's heels striking against the cold prison floor. It never could have been.

The chief legislacerator on the case can only muster an expression of slight annoyance when the news breaks that Vriska Serket has been assassinated in her cell. She's already beyond caring, though, it seems; by the time Terezi sneaks another glance at her, her eyes have already locked onto the chief suspect, Eridan Ampora. For all that the Empire does its level best to shield the higher social class of seadwellers from the consequences of their actions, what the Empire truly relishes even more is the opportunity to make an example out of anyone who steps out of line too far, a reminder that impunity and immunity to criminal action is not an absolute right wielded by the seadwelling caste but a privilege bestowed upon them by the Empress. The expression, the way her eyes catch on Ampora's face (contorted with anxiety and a kind of grim resolve, Terezi thinks), the positively predatory body language of the chief prosecutor, it all confirms what Terezi has assumed since the beginning: he is the sacrifice of the sweep, the violet blood spilled so that all others in the caste may be spared. If Terezi lets herself forget, for a moment, what has brought them all to this point, she could even forgive herself for looking at him, youthful and jittery and terror-furious and stripped of all entitlement and really stripped bare of everything but his deepest darkest fears and inadequacies, for looking at Eridan square in those rich violet eyes and seeing a martyr.

But there are no innocents in the Alternian court of law. There is no quarter spared to the juvenile and the mixed-up-in-powers-greater and the mistried-on-the-faults-of-others; there is only the great numinous steamroller of justice, prosecution if not on the vagaries of a case then on appeal in the court of law of the Supreme Justicar of Alternia (itself a kind of de facto prosecution—when the process of appeal consists of a battle in martial combat against His Honourable Tyranny, who but a few mythical exceptions would meet a verdict of anything other than exceedingly guilty?) and in younger days this would have been Terezi's stomping ground, a paradise where the only concern, the only value to rhetoric is in its ability to extract guilt and its just deserts from the defendant. She'd have taken glee in every courtblock hanging, cackled with triumph at the sight of the room with offenders strung up like a Twelfth Perigee's Eve light show.

But the sweeps have changed Terezi. When she looks at Eridan it isn't with the same hungry face of the prosecutor, but more of a weary resignation, the knowledge that there never really has been another way in all of this. She'd always believed that only the truly guilty would truly end up on the defense stand, but seeing him here all weak-kneed and halfway to catatonic with narcissistic indignation is enough to make her mind waver. Whose guilt would it be in this trial, when it was she who facilitated the meeting in the first place? When Eridan hangs from the rafters—as she knows he will—will it be him paying the price for his own culpability, or will he have taken the fall for her own conspiracy?

She glances away, overcome with discomfort. Then the trial begins, and everything she thought she knew slowly falls to pieces.

Bulkhead 46 Coprocessor reports an alarm, and when he hears the voice held inside Sollux screams.

Chapter Text

"This is my final fit, my final bellyache with no alarms and no surprises."

—Johana Śepart, Helmseer of the Normandy (later executed)

By the time Terezi has posted an urgent message addressed to Sollux—F3F3R1 1S D34D, 4PPL3B3RRY, 1 HOP3 YOUR B1G DUMB COMPUT3R BR41N H4S COM3 UP W1TH 4 PL4N H3R3—he is already beyond reach, beside himself with fragile anguish and a hideous, trembling terror. He is not answering to reason, he is hardly even listening to the outside world, and when he speaks it is with the jittery, schizophrenic fury of someone with their world turned inside out and back again, with everything he took for granted gone and one of the people who he'd held to be an immutable aspect of the world amputated from it without warning. And after so much cutting away, after his avenues of response to the tyranny of the world had been reduced to threading an impossible needle, after his compensation mechanisms had themselves been subjected to compensation mechanisms, it is one step too far for him to accept it all.

Rose tries to get through to him, somehow, to speak either in the language of his cybernetic thought or otherwise to be physically present for him, and she does both, with insistent messages at every hour and then, when those fail, to take her place at the lonely chair in the helmsblock normally reserved for technicians, watching over his small, shivering body all nerves, Rose, though he's all nerves too in a different way and when she considers it she can't help but utter a sharp, cold laugh. She looks at him again, really looks in the way few things merit, anymore. The first thing she notices is that he doesn't have his glasses, anymore, the two-tone abominations of style he had always worn in their earliest days together. There's a kind of tragic hilarity to that, too, the way when she looks at him and sees this shattered, reanimated corpse and she wonders how she could think that this could be a troll, that this ever could have been a troll, slim withered arms splayed out against the seat and the ribbon cables and the behemoth server with its hundred-thousand inputs and its hundred-million lights dazzling like stars against the ceiling and the shiny reflective floors.

Sometimes when she sits there in a kind of silent mourning—for all that Sollux may sit there and a humming machine and body burning with the heat of a new star so much that she knows he cannot be dead, cannot be gone, she still feels alone when she sits in the deep safety of the helmsblock—she looks down at herself, looking into the floor and seeing her faced mirrored back at her, and wonders when this became her, when it became all she could ever hope to become. There she is, lacquered against the dark metal, in all her glory, festooned beyond what is by now typical, beyond that which she could not imagine to be any other way, with her horns tall and thin and still murder-sharp like the rest of her, and the bear-trap teeth and the gills nested into her ribs, all these things terrifyingly pedestrian to her now in a way she cannot fathom them ever not being; and but so here she is decked in the trappings of a space alien military commander, royal violet blood and the rich indigo-blue sigil of admiralty embroidered into her uniform, and she thinks hard about the absurdity of it all, thinks back to the distant, fading images of her wigglerhood—childhood, for Christ's sake, a violent correction in her head that's painfully difficult to recall, after the fact—and there she is, with her soft hands and her hard mother and the petty inanities of a human existence. And when all that's said and done, when she's done with this terrifically macabre reminiscence about a time and a place that's not only passed but is impossible to return to in any meaningful sense, she's left with this bewildering morass of dark thought and the first one, the one most desperately clawing at her conscience, is this: how the hell is she supposed to convince Sollux that the revolution is not dead if even she cannot will herself to believe in it?

Because that's just it, isn't it? How could she believe anything other than that they are all fucked, that this is anything other than their own dead end? How can they go on now that the vertex around which their entire scheme had revolved has been turned into mealpulp by the state organ's need to keep power concentrated into the iron fist of its Empress? She thinks back to the brief scraps of her life in Sburb, a mere game which nevertheless turned everything she knew on its side, changed her in more ways than she can fathom (her body is the least of it now); she can spare another hollow laugh, now, when she recalls idly that Eridan Ampora was once its Prince of Hope, whose role was to destroy not only through his aspect—she can see easily enough how his appeals to keep his life would bring him to betray the Empire's only heiress—but of his aspect too, bringing the world crashing down on everyone around him. Now, hope lies shattered all around them, among the bodies of their dead friends.

But here, now, when she wonders if there's anything she can feel but empty, she looks back at Sollux, at the injustice in the world that would reduce him to this, to a dying shell of a body among a mind beyond what she can fathom, now. And it doesn't deflate her heart, this time, because she decides that she's had enough of feeling like she's had everything she's ever cared about stripped away from her, had enough of the false fulfillment of a lost crusade to bring anything constructive for this world. If the universe is to going to do its best to bring her down, then she is going to bring it down with her.

In Sollux, she sees the betrayal of a doomed cause, the feeling of loss resonating through his brittle bones and the shiny metal walls and the dimly-glowing wires and his vast consciousness dispersed among the ship in the cultured vats of brain and the dark, ominous fire of the electric coprocessors intersecting with him. In him she sees this forlorn potential set adrift, of a mind that could extend for miles and for eons but which hides here, alone, in the heart of the ship and does not emerge for anyone. This is the loss of hope, and this, Rose thinks to herself, is what she wishes to turn into a determined fury, into the anger of the damned that will strike fear into every single blood pusher in the Empire. Though they may fall, so too, will the Empress, and they will burn their path into the annals of history.

Rose whispers the thought into his ear, and slowly he comes alive again. Safety measures and extraneous features fall away, outside contact with the vessel is suspended, and piece by piece their final journey comes together. The calculations in his veins fill the room with a heady warmth, and their charted course is set in stone, where—in the end—they will meet the Empress, tearing her vessel apart as they too burn to ashes. And though Rose has faced death before with the spectre of terror at her back, this time, she thinks, she's okay with it.

With a deep, low rumble, the engines of the Lucriz prepare for departure.

Being a fugitive aboard an Alternian military vessel is a curious fate, Dave thinks, or maybe he might be thinking if he weren't spending most of his waking hours shitting his pants with fear and fleeing under the sporadic, shaky cover provided to him by Karkat and Aradia during their time off. What he's actually thinking is more along the lines that Aradia's probably thinking that, the way she sits there in that slightly creepy placid way and watches him sleep with a fascination like no way that's healthy, but something he tolerates nonetheless because she's the one who's been saving his skin repeatedly for the last equinox and a half, her and Karkat, too, both of them toting his sorry snoozing body from place to place while he dreams. It's a thankless job for them both, what with Dave barely managing time enough awake to utter more than a half-assed greeting or to do much more than move from one bulkhead to another, taking refuge in the little-serviced coprocessors or in the shadow of room-sized heating vents and purifiers and the engine's enormous catalysts, all of which does a number on his body—there's a reason they're unserviced, with the oppressive humidity and the aerosolized carcinogens keeping him safe from the prying eyes of the military but also tearing apart his body piece by piece—but it's the only way he can push on any further in these dark dreams that have turned more into his reality than anything else.

It's been weeks since he's done much more than sleep, spending his few waking hours in the miserable pyretic bowels of the Pompei, and it's now his time dreaming of the old Alternia, with its cool starry nights alive with sound and light and primal life, that seems more real to his mind than the brief flashes of vast bulwarks of electronics and wiring and piping, and with the way time turns now, a teeming morass of inconsistency that in his later days has turned again to be a comfort, the organized time he's spent so far acclimatizing himself to has again turned to dust, and now he's jumping back to front and front to back and he is in ancient history and he is ancient history, too, with the little alterations accumulating into who he is, more than just a prophet or a retrocognitive but a piece of the story, a cog in a machine, and despite the anguish and the exhaustion and the destruction all around that brought him to this place somehow he feels as if he's never been so much himself as he is in these dreams.

In the back of his memory, he holds this like a talisman: that he was once the Knight of Time, that these were once his stomping grounds, where he would replay over and over again and die so many times but keep trying, keep pushing, keep trying anyway to bring the past into alignment with the present. And here he is, flaming sword in hand, in this moment of finality of his own personal war, his own revolution every bit again a Knight, the guardian of a legacy and divine weapon to a cause far greater than himself, hero of Heat and the scalding shackles of the Signless that drove him down this path for the very first time, and of Clockwork, too, of the gears turning in his mind and those of the very universe he's inherited. In the past and the future and the rapidly-approaching future, where he was and is and will be and will have been, too, this is where he fuses himself with fate. It's the final dream, the point where everything that was and must be comes to a head in a single fateful capstone of time, and the responsibility falls to him now to complete the loop the way he always did, the way he knows best. His eyes close and he's transported—for the last time, he knows somehow—from the fevered jungle of steel and silicon of one Imperial hiveship to another.

He turns his eyes to take in the view of Bulkhead 46, and he knows he's in the right place: this is the Annihilator-class capital ship Lucriz.

He can hardly wrap his mind around the meaning of the image, though, before he's ripped away to another time, an overwhelming reminiscence and retreading of all the places and the times that he has ever been or will be, a kind of dark whirlwind that rips him apart and puts him back together, that sends a line drive down his heart and cuts it clean in two, just a single stutter-step in the middle creating a sign he's only ever seen once but which he's always known, and as the record twists back to the beginning all over again, this one last rewind rattling through his skull with a great shrieking scratch, he faces everything that's brought him to where he is, and he understands it all, carries the heavy weight of knowledge of an eternity of thoughts, events, and destinies.

More than once, he stood among the titans of an ancient cause. There was the Empress regnant, first: the glimmering gold of a gaudy ancient crown sitting upon her horns young, yet, and the immaterial words whispered into her ear that would send her down the path of a conquerer from the outset, but there was barely time to utter the words from the safety of a shadow before the image shifted again, then, the light from the surface and the watery shimmer permeating everything resolving into nothing, then: the dry, rancorous heat of a fire leaping from a brazier into the twilit sky, and the two standing astride a bridge—symbolic, there, with an older, wiser Empress and a lanky clown with a club making peace, or a deal with the devil or with each other because they're really both the devils, Dave said, to each, in that quiet dark language only they could understand—then: the blood of a nation smeared against the cavernous walls of their final hollow resting place, and Dave there, too, leading the shattered remnants back into the fray to meet their end, once and for all, into the morning star of the Mirthful, then: the martyr and his mother, his disciple and devoted friend, his staunch defender and soothsayer, all standing together but it is only then that Dave spoke to them, brought the language of injustice and disjunction to their hearts, only then that they turned their words from each other to the world beyond, and thus began their movement and their long, slow deaths, then: his brother, his ancestor, his shadow self bringing those lost words once again, and his friends' other halves there to hear the words of prophecy, too, when they strained their ears to the wind they swore they could hear a revolution in the breeze but it was just Dave, it had always been, then: a final stand, a long-horned warrior and his partner, veteran now of the two great uprisings, and he spoke to them just the same though they would fall as they had to, then: the Empress once again, timeless, ageless, an institution installed upon her chair like she would never leave it, and his hands as whisper-quiet as his voice as he snatched the tiara from her head, and just as he assured that everything would fall into line as it had to, it is only now that he is here, on the halls of Bulkhead 46 of the hiveship Lucriz of the Imperial Fleet and when he places his hand on the twisted electric pulse of the nerves and the wires of the processor and his mind turns to gears and the gears shift on and forward and forward and he is a lightningrod in the darkness and a fire in the frost and the story is his to command, and this is where it starts and ends.

There's an access shaft in the corner, and Dave swims from Bulkhead 46 to Bulkhead 26 to Bulkhead 12 to Access Shaft 249 to Ventilation Unit 15 to Mechanical Main Artery to Elevator 2 to the First Ring Station, the grand central and the heart of the Lucriz and time is moving strangely, now, everyone all around him seemingly locked in a state of paralyzed confusion from the deceleration from many times the speed of light to their final sublight impact—this Dave knows, though he doesn't know how or why or when the knowledge came to reside within him—and already he can feel the terrible trembling of a ship pushed well beyond the murky fringes of its capabilities, the blaring alarms of debris tearing into its sides from all angles and the X-ray waves falling hopelessly behind the developing fusion zone at the blunt nose of the vessel, and the certainty of death hanging in the air. Everything about Dave is purpose, every step that he takes through the chaos and the rattling path heavy with deliberation and meaning, and even as the throngs of panicked soldiers and mechanics assemble riotously in the ring's main square, Dave continues straight through them, a one-man parade on a single-minded mission into a future that is his to ensure. And so he goes, tearing his path into the Lucriz, swinging his sword (mended at last) until he finds the gilded arcade to the Helmsman's sanctum.

The hallway is filled with a curious, muted peace. Even as the deceleration grows more and more drastic, twisting the gravity of the room so much Dave can barely stand, it's soundproofed from everything outside; just the deep, rumbling buzz of transistors remains, and in brief glances forward, beyond the open doors to the block he can see his goal: beside Sollux, slumped over in his throne of silicon and switches and lights and brilliant yellow arteries, is Rose, lacquered in the black and violet finery of an admiral, braced against the helm with her eyes shut, preparing for the end.

Step by step, moment by moment. He's almost there, and as his last steps bring him into the cavernous room a tremendous shuddering roar rocks the ship, turning the gravity on its side and hurling Dave and Rose against a wall. The immense weight and the pressure of the deceleration force them together, and though Rose looks at him with a roil of bewilderment that he could even be here, trillions of miles from where he should be, she doesn't say anything before her face resolves into a smile.

Fancy meeting you here.
thought you and smartass foureyes could use a chaperone to save you from the end times
And Wormhole Metadave comes to save the day.
So much for the revolution, though, huh?
ok while wormhole metadave is a fucking kickass title and im totally using it from now on
we kinda got hornswoggled there
see the way i figure it there was never going to be a revolution that was mostly just the horrorterrors pulling one over on us a fucking gain because obviously we hadnt had enough of their bullshit
at least not in the way we figured it you know with us sending a big old army of lowbloods at the empresses army of lowbloods and having them beat the shit out of each other
that was a lame idea anyway though
so this ships headed towards the battleship condescension right
You heard the timer. "Impact in thirty seconds."
anyway as cool as your badass last stand here sounds youre kinda needed somewhere else

With a single motion—despite the intense force of gravity, he still makes it look casual—Dave pulls out the stolen crown, holding it out to Rose so she can see the tyrian gem and the Peixes insignia emblazoning the centre. She reaches to grasp it one hand, creating a bridge between the two of them.

what do you say rose
How, exactly, are you—
great lets get started
alley oop

Just as the vessel disintegrates around them, just as everything falls away piece by piece and turns from the gold of the helmsblock and the pilot's blood into the vivid red of the Battleship Condescension, the bright bright red of a lost race, the scorching red of divine and purifying flame, they are transported from the final whispers of a dream into the waking world.

It is a coronation unlike any other in the history of the Empire. Deep in the inhospitable mechanical caverns of the hiveship Pompei, it is hot and uncomfortable, and without the gentle rotation of a gravity ring, they all float in the middle of the room somewhat gracelessly, for what they know is a historic occasion without equal. Despite herself, Rose smiles, a certain part of her tickled by the absurd humour of it all, as she prepares for the blessing of her friends to ascend to the most powerful post in the known universe.

To her left is a prophet, a girl who could inflect her words to reach the ears of ghosts, of angels and demons both, and bring their thoughts to light. To her right is a mutant, heir to a cause that has risen and fallen and risen again on the fates of its believers, a leader who abdicates his power today to one he can trust to wield it. And before her, golden diadem in hand, is her brother, her comrade in a fight that started with the end of everything they thought to be true, and has ended now, for the first time since they ever came here, perhaps, with a growing whisper of hope that their old world can begin again, piece by piece, with the ancient remains of their memory building the foundations once again, but also her moirail, steadfast at her side in the travails of a world never their own until now.

And if that's the way it has to be, Rose thinks as she takes the crown and places it upon her head, then so be it: this is her too now, not just Rose Lalonde, the girl of thorns, the cool-eyed Seer who would walk into the endless, brambled void of aliens at the eternal expanse beyond the impossible fringes of space and leave alive, not just the human girl who remembers the distant call of long-lost stories and history, but Rozaya Leldon now, too, the heiress to a legacy, Empress of Alternia, Second of her Symbolhight, Princess-elect of the Imperial Popular Vanguard, Despotess of Eutjjal and whatever other countless titles might lie in store for her. This is her, this has always been her, and though she's never felt ready before now to take the mantle of the leader, she knows this now: leadership runs in her blood, both the red and the violet, and as they run together in her heart they meld into a royal fuchsia, the colour of the gem on the crown, the colour of the fallen regent, too. This is her. This has always been her.

She slides the microphone nested neatly in the golden crown down to her lips, and makes her first proclamation:

People of the Empire, this is your Empress speaking.