Dystopiastuck - bicantankerousJinx - Homestuck [Archive of Our Own] (2025)

Chapter 1: Your name is Karkat Vantas

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In the light of the sun
the moon is our only defence
one by one
we’ll sneak out through that hole in the fence
we’ll gather up all our friends and all link our hands
and run away together
across the vast desert sands

Fuck

God damn it you did it again.

You look down angrily at the small scratch on your hand in the barely visible light. This was the third time in whatever short time it had been you’d scratched yourself down in here. The previous two times you’d managed to miraculously avoid infection, though you’ve suffered through some bad ones before. This time though, you’re pretty sure you’ve already got dirt in the wound.

After your shift today you’d have to try and track down Aradia to see if she had any antiseptics or any bandages.

Thankfully, a bell echoes out behind you and you stand up and walk through the tunnel to the main shaft. The tunnel was steep, and many trolls had fallen to acquire a serious injury, or even fallen to their deaths here before. Though if they’d gotten injured, they would have just been culled anyway.

You lift yourself to the top of the small tunnel with your company of other trolls and head toward the exit.

When you reach the narrow mouth of the mine shaft, you let out a small hiss as the light form the nearly set moons hit your eyes.
You stand there for a few seconds and stare up at the fuchsia and emerald moons after your eyes adjust a little.

Your name is KARKAT VANTAS and you are a slave to the Empire.

You want nothing more than to get out of these mines.

You have no friends here, excepting your friend ARADIA MEGIDO, but she’s of a slightly different blood ranking to you, so you get to see her rarely. Your blood caste is BRIGHT RED and you are a MUTANT, though you say you are a BURGUNDY BLOOD, and none of the AUTHORITIES or WARDENS question or even check if you are lying, because NO ONE wants to be a RUST BLOOD. Not in this society anyway.

You dream of getting out; getting a better education than what you managed to scrape up, get to some place where you are safe from the HIERARCHY that dictates you to always be nothing more than a SLAVE for your entire SHORT LIFE.

Your name is KARKAT VANTAS and you dream of finding the UTOPIA.

Chapter 2: Your name is Aradia Megido.

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You flop down on your pathetic excuse for a bed and let out a huge sigh.

You are absolutely exhausted from today’s work, but you are after every day’s work anyway.

You didn’t get to see Karkat today, but you don’t get to most days anyway.

You run your scratched and callused hands through your long hair, which you really should trim. Mining is hard work and long hair gets in the way.

You are also hungry, but there’s nothing you can do about that. You’d already eaten your small meal for the morning. You decide it best just to sleep. You sit up to close the curtain quietly, so as not to disturb one of the many other sleeping trolls you shared a dorm with.

You looked at the window and jolted, almost letting out a small cry of surprise.

There, on the outside was a small robot, in the shape of a small hop-beast with a pair of dark cracked glasses.

You smile happily at the familiar shape. You carefully and slowly open the window, looking around as you do. You don’t want to get caught doing this, as opening the windows is forbidden in any situation and would earn you a beating or even a culling.

You open it enough for the little robot to sneak under, and then pull the window back down.

The robot presents a small piece of paper for you.

You are over the moons with happiness to see the familiar handwriting on the page.
You could barely understand anything it said, but you found the letter comforting anyway. You could make out the words that said “Aradia”, “Mines”, “Well”, “Fine”, and a few short sentences. Though the word you understood and liked best was the word “Sollux”, which was signed at the bottom of the page.

You had no idea where this little rabbit with tiny cracked glasses came from, but its appearance always brought a smile to your face.

So quickly and quietly, you reach into your pillow case for your pencil and a piece of your crumpled paper, (some items you weren’t allowed so you keep hidden) and started copying words and sentences you knew, they probably made no sense, but still. You drew little pictures too, depicting a day in the mine, excavating some huge ruin, finding treasure, things you loved, to make him think you were happy.

As soon as you were done you wrote “Aradia” at the bottom and gave it to the hop-beast and watched him run away as you let him out the window.

Your name is ARADIA MEGIDO and you are a slave to the Empire.

You want nothing more than to get out of these mines.

You have one friend here, but you see him seldom. You keep in contact with your friend SOLLUX, but you haven’t seen him since you were ABOUT TWO SWEEPS OLD.

You are a RUST BLOOD and have no choice but to be here. Your GOOD FRIEND KARKAT has a choice to be here or not, but his other option is a CULLING so he stays here. You’ve tended to Karkat’s wounds OFTEN ENOUGH to know his BIG SECRET.

You dream of taking him and your other two friends out of here and finding the UTOPIA

Chapter 3: Your Name is Sollux Captor

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You throw down your tools and walk out of the room.

Your shift is done for the day, and you don’t have to have the engine complete for another few days. Besides, you’re tired as fuck.

Behind you one of the other yellow bloods runs to pick up the tools you threw down. Due to your skills with machines, your powerful psionics, and your unusually high intelligence for someone of your caste, you are regarded as superior to most of the other yellow bloods; therefore, they treat you with higher respect. Most in your situation wouldn’t think much of it. You however, take full advantage of it.

You walk straight to your block, having already eaten, and flop down face first on your bed.

Due to your “high status” you only share a room with one other semi-intelligent asshole, and could do what you wanted to your room.

Despite the taunts from you roommate, you kept the wall above your bed plastered with letters sent to you from your dearest friend. You haven’t seen her since you were both about two or three sweeps, but you’ve kept in contact. When you both went to work, you thought you’d never even hear from each other again, however, a strange mechanical hop-beast appeared at your window one night, bearing a piece of paper covered suspiciously in maroon ink, covered in drawings and single words.

At the bottom was written “Aradia”.

You had decided to write back.

An actual letter though, even though you knew she probably couldn’t read it.

You couldn’t read well either, but you at least could write intelligible sentences.

You’d also managed to steal a pencil from somewhere to send to her because you were seriously worrying about that maroon ink she had been using.

You lie down on your bed and fall asleep for the only four hours you’re allowed before anyone can come in and give you more orders.

Your name is SOLLUX CAPTOR and you are a slave to the empire.

You work DAY IN DAY OUT making repairs and building machines and engines for the ROYAL FLEET. Sometimes, you even get to work with COMPUTERS.

You have only ONE FRIEND IN THE WORLD and she is the recipient all of your LETTERS.

You wish LIKE HELL that you could just get out of this place.

You know that the whole UTOPIA thing is a COMPLETE LOAD OF BULLSHIT but you still would really love to get ARADIA and GET THE FUCK OUT.

Chapter 4: Your name is Tavros Nitram

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You walk in to your tiny hive, exhausted.

You had spent the whole day helping with construction of a house in the village you were currently staying in. your hive was just temporary, built out of scraps and only a few square meters all up, but right now it was the best thing you’d ever seen.

You are greeted by your tiny Lusus crashing into your face.

You let out a giggle and give him a quick hug before letting him fly around your head.

You take a look at the wooden box you brought in from outside your hive. Inside is a small container of water which you take a quick drink from then offer to your Lusus. You’ve also been left a small chunk of a loaf of bread, which you tear half off for your Lusus, then shove the rest into your mouth.

You are beginning to seriously worry about food and water. Neither you, nor Tinkerbull were getting enough of either.

As a troll of brown blood, you are not permitted to stay in the care of your Lusus for more than four sweeps. Recently, you had just turned 6. Well, at least you think you did.

Anyhow, Tinkerbull was staying with you illegally, meaning he couldn’t leave the hive. And when you travelled somewhere else, he always had to hide in a bag or something, which was really terrible because sometimes you had to travel deserts and stuff and you couldn’t give him any water because if you did you’d get caught and he always ended up dehydrated and you had to give him all your water when you arrived.

Food and water are rationed out to everyone, so you get just enough to not starve and to be strong enough to do whatever work you were assigned. Seeing as you had two mouths to feed, you only ate half as much and so did Tinkerbull.

Very soon, the both of you would starve to death.

More than once you’d tried kicking Tinkerbull out of your hive, so he could go find a new troll to care for, so he could live in better conditions, but he’d always come back.

Partially, this annoyed you, as it was causing you both to starve. But you couldn’t bring yourself to be mad at him. His loyalty to you made you love him that much more.

But anyway, you have to do something soon. You haven’t eaten properly in weeks. You need to take Tinkerbull and get away.

Your name is TAVROS NITRAM and you are a SLAVE TO THE EMPIRE.

Each day, without fail, you get up REALLY EARLY and go help build HOUSES in the VILLAGE you are currently stationed in.

You LOVE YOUR LUSUS SO MUCH and you really don’t want to PUT EITHER OF YOU IN DANGER by doing something as stupid as RUNNING AWAY, but it’s just a risk you’re eventually going to HAVE TO TAKE.
You dream of taking you LUSUS and finding the UTOPIA.

Chapter 5: ARADIA: Receive important word from your penfriend.

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You walk into the housing building at the end of the night. You were incredibly tired, yet you keep up your “I’m okay” face as always. When you finally managed to shuffle through to the mess hall for your morning meal, you notice your mine unit was eating tonight with your good friends Karkat’s. As soon as you see his nubby horns and his face on the half broken wooden table, you quickly push past everyone to take the seat next to him.

‘Good morning Karkat, how are you?’ you ask cheerfully.

‘Oh just wonderful, fucking fantastic as usual’ he says without lifting his head off the table.

‘I can see that!’ you say with a quick giggle.

‘We better get something fucking delicious tonight or I’m going to kill the troll on the table behind me.’

‘Hm? Why that troll in particular?’

‘Because he’s the closest aside from you. I can’t kill you or I’d lose the only relatively intelligent troll to talk to here.’

‘Oh, I’m… touched? But anyway, I think you’ll find we just have more bread for tonight.’ You say with a gentle smile. He lifts his head slightly, still leaning over, and looks around to
the large trays of bread being carried in.

‘Oh god fuck it!’ he says slamming his face back into the table.

‘Karkat, hitting your head isn’t going to help anything! At best, it will give you a concussion, silly.’

‘Good. If I get a concussion maybe I’ll just get culled and not have to live with this shit anymore.’

Oh.

You really don’t know what to say to that.

The older trolls come around and tear off a piece of bread for you each and just throw it on to the table in front of you.

You pick it up and do your best to eat it slowly. Karkat however, just shoves it all into his mouth at once, barely chewing it at all.

You talk a little more before the bell rings and you have to move out for the next two units can move in. you say a quick goodnight to Karkat and head out, following the rest of your unit.

You get into your dorm room and get a cup off your bedside table and stand in front of front of your bed.

When the steward pours you’re your share of water, you drink some, then flop down on your bed, and wait for the room to fall quiet.

It takes about ten minutes for everyone to get into bed and stop talking and complaining.

You lie awake for much longer than that.

Wide awake, you stare at the ceiling and just think.

You think of what it would be like if you weren’t doomed to die a slave.

Perhaps you could have had a little house, outside of some big city, far enough away to not be a part of it, but close enough to just see it. You could dig around all day, finding ancient relics and old tombs. You might even have been able to keep your Lusus!

Maybe you could have kept all your friends too. You could keep in contact with Karkat and Sollux and the others you knew before you went off to work. You could have even played some games. You remember hearing about one when you were still living with your Lusus. FLARP, was it?

Anyway, it could never happen, but it’s a nice thought to dwell on.

Much to your surprise, you hear a small tap at the window.

You look up to see it’s the hop-beast-robot again, with another letter!

You are so happy. Usually it’s a few weeks before Sollux can send you a reply.

You let in the robot and take the letter.

You tried really hard to read it because at the top was underlined several times the word: IMPORTANT.

Also, the text showed no sign of his usual typing quirk, so you were certain that it really was very important.

IMPORTANT

Aradia.

You are going to have to try your very best to read this because it is so important that you do.
In 6 days, there is going to be a solar eclipse. Which just means the moon is going over the sun.
It happens every couple sweeps or so, but this time, it’s going to be different.
This time, it will be a Double eclipse.
Both moons are going to go over the sun.
This will provide the perfect chance for you to escape.
Take someone with you, and get out through that hole in the fence you were telling me about.
I will meet you somewhere.
If you want to do this, send me a reply tonight and I will help you plan it out.

Sollux.

Well,
Maybe your little daydream could happen after all.

Chapter 6: KARKAT: Have horrible nightmare.

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‘Hurry up and get down there!’ they yelled down at you. You were terrified, clinging to the rope, knowing if you slipped just a little, your life would come to a horrible end.

‘P-please, I can’t see! I’m gonna fall!’ you nearly cried back at them.

‘Stop whining and get down there!’

Slowly, slowly, you shuffled down the rope, terrified of what was at the bottom, if the rope even reached the bottom. The tiny gap letting in your only source of light grew smaller and smaller until you could barely see it at all.

You nearly screamed when your foot touched something.

You cried when you found out it was the cave floor.

You crawled across the ground slowly, sobbing as you tried to find a wall.

You had no tools, no light, barley four sweeps old, and expected to bring a sample of the cave wall back up to the surface. You jolted as your fingers brushed up against the wall. You felt around for some loose rocks. You grabbed a few and shoved them in the pockets of your pants.

Now you had completed your task, you sit with your knees up and your arms around them with your back against the wall and just cried for a while.

You were still terrified of being down here.

You rock quickly back and forth, the way your Lusus used to rock you when you cried as a wriggler.

After a while, you decided it was time you faced your fear of going back up that long rope again.

When you realized

You had no idea where the rope was in this darkness.

You couldn’t take it anymore.

You just screamed.

-

You wake with a jolt, sitting straight up in your bed, hand clutched over your blood-pusher.

You felt like you were going to vomit.

You learn forward and sit with your head on your knees, rocking back and forth quickly, trying to get your harsh breathing under control, because at this rate, you ‘re gonna wake everyone up.

You don’t care about their sleep, it’s just you don’t want anyone to see you like this right now.

You take the sleeve of your shirt and wipe the cold sweat on your forehead which is literally dripping off your face.

After a few minutes, you lay down again.

After another few minutes you get up and run to the ablution block and throw up what little food you have in your stomach.

Chapter 7: SOLLUX: Think.

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You stand in the corner of the workshop, tapping your forehead against the wall.

Okay, you could wait up till morning, the eclipse would hit just before midday, meaning as soon as you’d gotten out, you’d have to run like fuck to get to cover or you’d be killed by the midday sun.

You knew there were workshops with a doors leading outside. But there was only one that contained shit that didn’t need to be heavily guarded. You’d get one, max. And if necessary, you had you optic blasts you could use to take care of him.

But the timing was something you need to get perfect. And a place to take cover till nightfall. Then you needed a meeting point to make your rendezvous with Aradia. If, she’s even agreed to it.

You damn well hope so because she deserves much better than to waste away in that shithole.

But then again this was more dangerous than trying to escape of a night, environment-wise.

Guard-wise, it was safer. Much, much safer.

Now you’d have to get her to get out at the right time, and get to the right place, and if possible, not be shot or burned to death.

Your train of thought was interrupted by some stupid asshole yelling at you.

‘Hey! Captor! Stop slacking and get back to work!’

‘Yeah, I’m fuckin’ going asshole’

‘Watch your language.’

As soon as the supervisor turned away, you flipped him off and quietly said ‘fuck that.’

You get back to work on the engine, only half paying attention.

You’d have to take a lot of food and water with you. And clothes fit for the desert. Unfortunately, the people here don’t usually take a stroll out in the desert, so you don’t really have anything to wear. Maybe you could tie up a bed sheet or something and make it into a hood. You’d also need a bag to keep food in. and some sort of container for water.

You knew the dessert was about thirty miles in each direction from the mines, twenty-two from here, so you’d have to wait for Aradia to catch up.

Suddenly you remember there’s a person you asked Aradia to bring, to help keep her safe on the way, so she wasn’t alone.

Great, now that’s three people you got to provide for.

No one you know shares her blood colour, so she’ll probably bring some friend from her mining unit.

You suddenly realize you’ve completely stopped working while you concentrate your thoughts on your plan when you receive a sharp whip to the back.

‘Get back to work loser.’

Great. Now that’s gonna fucking ache all day.

You still need to figure out all the details within the next two or three days, seeing as you only have five days left.

You’d have to wait till your shift was over.

Chapter 8: KARKAT: Get lowdown from Aradia.

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‘So you see? We can get out and never have to work again!’ she whispered to you as you walked up to the mountain where the mines were situated.

‘I don’t know Aradia. I think your information might be a little shifty.’

‘But I know it’s true! Its word from a friend, and I believe every word of it!’

‘How do you know the message wasn’t intercepted?!’

‘I wouldn’t have gotten it then! Trust me; I trust my sources, Karkat.’

‘How do you know you wouldn’t have gotten it if it was intercepted though?!’

‘The messenger wouldn’t have brought it! Just trust me Karkat, please. This is our one chance to get out of here for good!’

You are silent for a moment before you finally caved.

‘Fine. But if we get culled for this, I’m blaming you.’

She was nearly jumping up and down in excitement, a huge smile across her face.

‘Yay!! Thankyou Karkat! I promise we’ll get through this okay?’

‘Yep. Whatever.’

She started whispering her little ideas and plans, backtracking every now and then as she thought of a better idea.

You understand why she won’t tell you who this informant is. In case you’re overheard, or you give it away in a slip of the tongue. But until today, you hadn’t even known she’s been communicating to someone outside of the mines.

You have already entered the mine and are now walking down one of the main tunnels where the units split off.

She was still whispering to you about saving food and water somehow.

She was wondering aloud in a hushed tone if she could manage to swipe some extra food from the kitchens.

She knew she needed a jar or something for water, but it couldn’t be too big because water is heavy.

That is when you realize she’s still with you and not her own unit.

‘Aradia! You’re gonna get in trouble!’ you hiss.

‘Pshh, I’ll be fine!’

‘Not if they do a count-off!’

‘Just calm down Karkat! It’ll be fine!’

You just stew away angrily as she keeps talking. You both reach the new pit and get to work.

She works beside you and every now and then thinks of some new idea for your grand plan.

You start to think about what you’re gonna do.

Where you’ll go once in the desert.

How you’ll hide.

How long your food will last.

More importantly, how long your water would last.

You barely even realize your work has slowed to a stop.

You don’t even notice the light coming up behind you.

‘HEY!’ you hear too late as a pole of some sort is brought down on your head.

‘GET BACK TO WORK FUCKER!’ yells the guard as he beats you until you curl up defensively on the ground. He stops and leaves, but not before giving you a swift kick to the gut.

As soon as he’s gone Aradia quickly jumps to your side.

‘Oh my gosh, Karkat are you okay?? Can you sit up??’

You respond with a pain-filled moan.

Slowly, you uncurl and face the rough mine wall again as you chip away at the rock with a small chisel. Aradia is still behind you, but you don’t have the energy to tell her to go back before she gets caught too.

You think you’re bleeding somewhere and your vision has gone blurry. You keep going though. You can get patched up later.

Now, with a burning hate for the guards and wardens, you think of Aradia’s plan in a new light.

The two of you are going to fucking get out of here.

Chapter 9: TAVROS: Flip the fuck out.

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Okay, okay. You need to stay calm.

Okay, staying calm failed, now proceed to pace furiously around your tiny hive and pull tightly on your Mohawk.

You’re hyperventilating now and you just couch down in a corner and start to tremble.

Today brought very bad news in the form of a note left for you in the crate left at your door.

You’d eaten, drank, then noticed it.

To the resident of this hive.

As of tomorrow, all brown-blooded trolls working within the village will receive a cut-back on all food and water.

You will receive just over half of what you have currently been getting each day.

Sincerely,

Management.

This was the worst news you’d ever received.

When you’d read it, you just stared at it for a few minutes.

When Tinkerbull had flown over and started nuzzling you, trying to find out what was wrong, you’d nearly cried.

Now he sits beside you, staring up at you.

Your stomach rumbles loudly, reminding you of just how hungry you were going to be tomorrow.

And the day after.

It would just get worse.

It was okay for the other trolls, they were only feeding themselves.

But now you and Tinkerbull were definitely going to starve.

Or die of thirst.

He flutters up onto your knee and you put your arms around him and pull him in for a hug.

You hold him tightly to your chest and he nuzzles you gently.

You know he knows what’s happening; he can read better than you.

You know that he’ll never leave you, and he knows you’ll never leave him.

You sit and cry into your beloved Lusus for a while.

When you calm down and stop, you look at him and see there’s a little blotch of light brown on his head. It’s okay though. It would wash away. Wait, no it’ll have to just wear away, you have no water to spare now.

You sit up instantly as an idea hits you. You get out some of your own tools and pull a piece of wood off of your pathetic excuse for a table and start to build.

After an hour of careful planning and crafting, you have a small wooden crate. If you steal a piece of plastic tomorrow, you could use that to line it. Then, you could sit it outside when it rains. You could use your food crate too, if it rained at night, since it was collected in the morning, and the morning one was taken when you left your hive for work.

This could fix your water problem, but you’ll still be hungry.

Now, you just have to hope that it rains in the next few days.

Chapter 10: SOLLUX: Get promotion.

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‘Hey Captor!’

‘What’

‘c’mere, the boss wants to talk to ya’

You follow the asshole that distracted you from your work. You follow him down a hall away from the workshops and towards the exit. You follow him out of the building; fully aware this could very well be a ploy for him to ‘off you while no one’s around, so you leave your guard very much up.

When he walks into the administration building, you relax just a little.

You follow him to the end of the hall and into an office to the left.

‘Captor! Take a seat kid!’ says the troll behind the desk cheerfully as you enter the room. You do what he says, sitting and making yourself comfortable as possible, giving off an air of arrogance.

‘You, leave.’ He says to the troll who so kindly ran the errand to get you in the first place. He nods his head in submission and leaves the office.

‘AND SHUT THE DAMN DOOR!’ he yells after the troll who just left. He runs back and quickly bows in apology and promptly closes the door.

‘God, some fuckers are completely useless aren’t they?’ he says to you.

‘They are indeed.’ You reply. He chuckles at your answer. You see a name plate on his desk with the words Warden Sarken engraved on it.

‘Ha, I like you kid, so I got some good news for you!’ he says as he reaches for a bowl of candies on his desk. He had some nerve. Gorging on sugary treats while you are half-starving.

‘I’m getting fired?’

‘No!’ he says, laughing at your sarcasm. ‘Even if we wanted to fire you, we’d only demote you! But back to the point, you’re getting a promotion!’

‘Excuse me what?!’ you half yell back.

Sarken lets out a chuckle and says ‘yes kid, to the imperial fleet! The Condesce’s ship itself!’

‘You’re bullshitting me, right?’

‘Wrong Mr Captor. You leave in two days! Just enough time to finish that engine! You can take it with you!’ he says as if you’d be simply packing the massive thing in your suitcase.

If the situation were different, you’d have been over the moon about this. The Condesce doesn’t have slaves on her ship, she has servants. Fucking high paid servants who do what the fuck they want in their time off from their short working hours. But you know if you go, even if you weren’t planning your big escape, you’d never be able to contact
Aradia again. No matter how much money you have, the postal service doesn’t run to maroon-blood territory. And also, Aradia would probably attempt the escape alone, most likely resulting in her eventual death.

‘Am I able to decline?’ you ask.

‘Sorry Mr captor, we’re not offering. You leave in two days.’

This complicates your escape plan.

Then it hits you.

On the Condesce’s ship, she keeps only blue bloods or higher.

Even the mechanics.

‘There’s a catch, isn’t there?’

‘There’d only be a catch if it were an option for you Mr captor, but yes.’

‘What do I have to do?’

‘Well, technically, you won’t be doing anything.’ He says, putting his elbows on the table, his hands in front of his face, in an attempt to hide the slowly forming smirk. ‘You’ll be
kept in a special place, where no one but the Condesce herself has clearance! And you’ll never be hungry or thirsty again!’

To anyone else, this would seem like the chance of a lifetime.

But you understood what he meant.

‘You- you want me to power her ship with my psionics.’ You said, rather than asked.

‘Yes, Sollux. In an attempt to get back to Alternia within a short amount of time, she uh, she wore out her previous, uh, power source. But that’s it, that’s all I had to tell you, go back to your room now, you’ll be needing you sleep! You have a long journey in a few days!’

Yes. Yes you do have a long journey in a few days.

But you sure as fucking hell were not going to board the Imperial fleet.

Chapter 11: ARADIA: Receive plans.

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Four more nights. Three, since it’s nearly daybreak now. You wait awake anxiously for the hop-bot to show up with your promised letter.

Today had been hard. You’d saved your breakfast in your pocket, so you hadn’t eaten till dinner. Even then, you saved most of it. You are pretty certain Karkat had done the same.

Your water still sits in your cup; you’d only had a sip of that too.

You were still wondering how you’d keep the water.

If you couldn’t take water, you’d die within a night.

You probably wouldn’t even make it to night.

Out in the desert was a hot place, but in the middle of the day, with a sun you couldn’t walk under in any circumstance, you’d dehydrate and die within a few hours.

You jumped a little when you heard a tap at the window. You drew back the curtain and opened it a crack to let in the hop-bot. in his hands were a letter, and a large glass jar.

You took them both and read what Sollux had to say.

Aradia

you will need to plan carefully with whoever you take with you, your escape route
you will need to be at the place you will be leaving from at exactly 11:43. The second the sun goes dark you will need to run as fast as you can to the gap in the fence you know about. You also need to get away completely unseen. I have taken a look at a map of your area, and about just over half a mile away is a large rock face sticking up in the sand. It should give you some cover. You need to hide there till night, then you need to keep going as soon as it’s safe. I will meet you about five mils from there, so you’ll need to travel fast or we’ll all get stuck in the sunlight.
I’ll take you where we need to go from there.
If you don’t find me, keep going until you find cover.

Also, here is a jar to store water in. don’t put all your water in ti, you’ll need to drink plenty before you go, okay?
Use a sheet or something as a hood too, it’ll protect you some from the sun on your way out.

Once you leave, you will have about thirteen minutes to get out and get to cover.
When the first moon goes over, you should get near perfect cover. When it moves, there’ll be about a minute before the second moon covers the sun completely, so the sun’s gonna sting a bit for a minute, but don’t slow.

It should take you longer to get out of the mine compound than to get to the rocks, okay, so hurry.

Also, this is the last time I am able to contact you with this robot, so don’t send anything back.
Make sure if you don’t find me you keep going ok

I’ll see you in a few days, maybe.

Sollux.

At the bottom of the page he had drawn a map and kind of a diagram of what to do and when, because you found his instructions a little confusing to read, and he knew you would.

But what was all this talk of not finding him? Surely you couldn’t stray too far off track. And why can you not contact him anymore? There’s three more days until you go! Maybe it’s
just a security thing, you think.

Surely nothings gone wrong on his end, has it?

Chapter 12: Sollux: Blow this joint.

Chapter Text

Its dinner time and you snuck out of the main mess hall claiming you were headed for the ablution block.

You’d headed back to your room, grabbed a bed sheet and tied it into a sort of cape around you. You grabbed the sheet off your roommate’s bed too and tied it into a little bag.

You put your jar of water and it and headed for the door. Before you’d opened it though, you’d frozen for a moment, the turned back and pulled down all of Aradia’s letters off the wall and stashed them in your sheet-bag.

Now, you approach the now empty kitchen and stood with your ear to the door.

No one was inside, from what you could hear.

There weren’t any guards around either, because they were all preparing for the arrival of representatives of the Imperial Fleet to arrive, though that could change at any moment and you’d be swamped by guards. You slide open the wooden door and quietly step inside, replacing the door behind you. You rush over, grab another two empty jars and filled them with water from the tank that was kept in the corner of the kitchen. You also swiped two loaves of bread, and as you left, your eye caught on a jar of preserved fruit.

Stuck to the side of the jar was a sticker reading; delivery for chief warden Sarken.

Perfect.

This’ll wipe the smug grin off the assholes face.

You take the jar and put it in your bag, which you had to re-adjust to carry all its contents.

You quickly realized that if you had to make a run for it, the jars would clang together and smash. If you had to sneak away, they were likely to clang together and make a loud noise anyway.

You found a bunch of dish towels and stuck them between the jars.

Okay, now the load’s pretty heavy on your shoulder.

That’s gonna start hurting pretty bad soon.

On your way out of the kitchen, you spot a knife.

A big kitchen knife.

You take it and head out the door again and into the thankfully still empty hallway.

You carefully stick your head around the corner and head down to the workshops quickly.

It seems to take so much longer now you’re in a rush to get there.

When you reach the workshop you planned on leaving through, you had planned on just walking in and running straight through the door, but now you decide to lean your ear up against the door.

You can hear two guards having a friendly conversation in there.

A very friendly conversation in there.

Of course they’d choose the generally unguarded workshop to have a fucking feelings jam.

You decide to head back up the other end and towards the other exit which shouldn’t have anyone stationed on it for the time being.

You quickly walk back up the hall and around a corner. You walk through there, turn another corner and keep going.

You hadn’t been this way many times before, but you knew that after this stretch of corridor, you had one more turn and then you’d only be about twenty meters from the exit.

Still quick paced, you turned the corner to see the door.

But what you didn’t expect was that you saw it swinging shut.

You’d only gone about a step around the corner before you’d turned back. You were going to quickly head down back the way you’d come until you found a place to hide, but you’d turned too quickly and lost you’re footing.

You were sitting on the ground and that guard was metres away.

You held tight to your knife and bag, and prayed he just walked into one of the rooms the doors in the hallway lead to.

He had to stop and turn into one of them.

The footsteps were getting closer.

You knew standing up would probably knock the jars together, even in their dish towel wrappings.

He couldn’t be more than a metre or two away from you.

Suddenly the footsteps stopped.

Your heart was still racing.

You let out a tiny sigh of relief.

Then nearly had a heart attack.

‘Well, well, well, Mr Captor!’ said a voice in the most condescending tone you’d ever heard.

You flinched and stared straight at the guard who stood to your side.

It was Sarken.

‘What would we be doing here? You don’t want to miss your flight this morning do you? Our guests would be so horribly disappointed! I better let them know where you are.’ He said with a smirk as he lifted a small radio to his face.

Without thinking, before Sarken could even press the button, you had leapt up and thrown the knife, in the general direction of his face.

As you darted past, you saw a flash of green-teal. You were gone before you could even see where the knife hit.

A pained scream rang out through the hallways.

Now all the guards would be on your tail.

And so would whatever assholes from the fleet that are here would be too.

You burst out the door and just ran.

As fast as you fucking could.

And wow, for someone who didn’t exercise, could you run fast.

Behind you, you heard yelling and orders being tossed around. At some point you heard the rip of machine gun fire, which was silenced by scream of “WE NEED HIM ALIVE! WE NEED HIME ALIVE!”

You got to the wire fence and began to climb, trying not to think about the barbed wire at the top.

Suddenly, a jeep full of guards wielding guns armed tranquilizer darts pulled up behind you.

‘Come down, or we’ll have to shoot!’ called a voice through a megaphone.

You were surprised at how much trouble they were going through to catch you, but it makes sense you guess, if the Condesce herself is waiting for you.

You give in.

You release your grip on the fence and land on your feet.

You straighten back up, but as you lift your head, you release an optic blast powerful enough to push away the car.

Then you turn and shoot a hole in the fence and run as fast as you fucking can over the sand.

You look back every few seconds, but now you’ve turned your psionics on them, they don’t seem as eager to catch you. As you reach the top of a dune, you look back and see that now the only ones chasing are the fleet-people.

Heh.

The fuckers ain’t gonna catch you now.

Chapter 13: KARKAT: Premonition? I think so.

Chapter Text

You ran.

Aradia was at your side and you ran.

You knew they were behind you, but you dared not look around for fear of slowing yourself down.

Culling is the only punishment for runaway slaves.

Torture and Culling.

They were gonna get you. Catch you and tie you up. Take you back to the compound, just to taunt you. Then, you’d be killed in front of all the other slaves, as an example.

You run up to the hole in the fence, which is weird, because a second ago you could have sworn you had already gotten away from the compound. Aradia climbed through and beckoned to you, calling hurriedly. You bent down to get through the hole and stuck your head through.

Then you got caught.

Not by your pursuers, but by the fence.

The sharp loose wire cut into your skin.

It doesn’t hurt, but what’s worse, is it cut so deep your bright, bright red blood spills everywhere.

You struggled against the wire, but you only succeeded in injuring yourself more.

then, deciding hope for you was lost, Aradia fled. Out into the desert.

You looked up to see her get shot down.

Then they caught you

-

You sit up in bed quickly, your heart beating so hard it may come pounding out of your chest.

You groan and bend over as you realize a sharp pain in your head.

You hear a murmur from across the room telling you to shut up already.

This is the third night since you’d agreed to go with Aradia that you’d dreamt of that fence. Well, not necessarily the fence, just the wire it was made of. It was weird too, because usually your nightmares were just memories coming back to plague you. But since Aradia convinced you to join her, it had all been of the same few things. The first night, you’d dreamt you were running from something and you’d tripped and got tangled in some discarded wire, the second night you’d dreamt you’d been captured but your captors hadn’t brought any rope to tie you with, so they’d used some barbed wire from a fence instead. And tonight, the fence. All this dreaming of wire and fences was really starting to make you anxious. Mostly about the fence in particular. It was probably stupid, but you couldn’t help it.

What if you and Aradia couldn’t find the gap in the fence?

What if, like in your dream, you got caught and the guards got you?

What if you got caught and were left to die in the sun?

You rubbed furiously at the ache at your temples as you try to push all these thoughts from your mind. You’ll be needing your sleep.

Two nights to go and you’ll be needing your sleep.

Chapter 14: ARADIA: Start getting concerned.

Chapter Text

You are really starting to worry.

Worrying while pulling a mine cart is really not the best thing to do, especially when the cart is heavy and the track is on a slope.

And the cart is full of rock and iron.

And the slope is particularly damp.

You find yourself worrying, anyhow.

The last few days had been hard, with you cutting back on food and water. You were weaker than you were used to being, yet the task just one day ahead of you, would require you be at optimal strength.

You are worried about Karkat most of all. He doesn’t look as though he’s been sleeping properly, (well, his definition of properly)You can tell because the bags under his eyes have darkened. And you know for a fact he’s been saving all his food, rather than just some, and so, hasn’t eaten at all for a day or two.

And your food and water. You really hope Sollux has more because you really don’t have much saved, and your jar is barely a quarter full.

You’re also wondering where you’ll go after you find Sollux. Across the desert first, but where then?

What was he planning on doing after you’d all escaped?

Did he have anything planned at all?

Where could you go where you’d be safe? Where no one would send you back because your blood caste was too low to care for? Where people would accept you, and welcome you into their towns, their workplaces and their homes? Surely there is nowhere like that. You’d have to all live out in isolation somewhere. Which would be good you guess. But how

would you provide food for yourselves? What if there were no edible resources out there for you to use?

You find yourself having second thoughts and have to pull your own head back into place.

You’d already told Sollux you’d meet him, and without a way to contact him anymore, you could no longer turn him down. He’d wait for you in the desert until he starved.

For no reason would you be giving up.

You and Karkat are going to get out. You, Karkat and Sollux would all escape and live freely somewhere.

So what if you live in a place where it is unthought-of of to be a low-blood and to be free.

Well if you could find no town to accept you, nor a place to call your own, then tough.

You’d just have to find the utopia.

Chapter 15: KARKAT: Hide your bruises

Chapter Text

Tonight was not a good night for you.

Tonight was really not a good night.

You really hope you don’t see Aradia tonight, even though you probably need to talk about the plan, but still.

You don’t want her fussing over you this morning.

You find a seat in the mess hall and slowly find a seat, barely able to walk having to do a sort of shuffle instead.

You plonk down hard on a seat, regretting it instantly, moaning quietly because of how much you ache.

You hold your head in your hands with your elbows on the table.

You would kill for an icepack right now.

Unfortunately, as a slave, you don’t have the luxury of getting an icepack. Especially in the middle of the fucking desert.

You just want to sit there for a while and just let everyone get on with ignoring you- and oh isn’t that just your god damn fucking luck, Aradia’s walking in now.

You keep your head down hoping she either doesn’t see you or at least doesn’t see your face. If she comes over you could just say you’re tired and pretend to fall asleep with your face on the table and-

‘Karkat?’ oh shit

‘Karkat what happened to you?!’ she asked sounding worried. What, no. how the fuck could she know? She can’t see the marks on your face-

‘Karkat your neck is all bruised! What happened?!’ Oh. You should have realized your face wasn’t the only place that had developed bruises and such.

‘I uh,’ you start. ‘I kinda spoke back to a guard.’

‘KARKAT YOU IDIOT!’ she almost yelled, taking the seat beside you. She reached out to take a look at the damage and for a split second you forgot about hiding your face.

Unfortunately, a split second was all it fucking took to look up at her.

‘Karkat your face!’

Sure enough, your face was covered in still-forming bruises and a few cuts. Your lip’s busted your nose had been bleeding and you have a pretty deep gash on your left cheek.

And that just your face. Your lower neck and shoulders are covered in big bruises where that fucker took to you with a club or something, your back is too, you have cuts and scratches all over you where he got out a knife, your ankle is sprained from where he stepped on it to hold you down and you’re pretty sure you have a broken rib or two.

‘What the hell happened?!?’ she asks.

‘A guard came by and was going on about how we all needed to work faster and harder and if we weren’t half dead by the end of the day, we weren’t working hard enough.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘I only said it as he walked away and I only said it quietly, I didn’t actually fucking mean for him to hear it.’

She just stares at you impatiently, waiting for you to answer her question.

With a sigh, you said.

‘I said “suck my bulge nookfucker.”’

She almost laughed at how typical it was for you to say something like that. You have no idea why she was expecting something else or even what she was expecting.

‘Karkat, something like that is enough to get you culled.’ She scolds.

‘Well it won’t be in two fucking nights.’

She stares at you with wide eyes and you instantly realize your fuck-up. You quickly look around to see if anyone saw. To your displeasure, some troll on the table behind you is
turned around and eyeing you suspiciously.

God damn it.

You were gonna have to be really fucking careful in the next two days.

‘Sorry’ you say quietly. She rolled her eyes in frustration.

‘Okay we still need to figure out what’s going on.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Like, figure out where we’re meeting and when?’

‘Oh yeah, right.’

‘Okay, S- my friend said we need to be ready to go outside at exactly 11:43.’

‘Oh, well that’s really fucking helpful and all, but how in the name of whatever gods that actually exist and don’t give a shit about us are we going to tell what fucking time it is?’

After doing a quick look around her, she reached into her shirt and pulled out a gleaming silver pocket watch.

‘Where the fuck did you get that?’

‘A guard started getting a bit friendly with me towards the end of my shift yesterday and I saw it clipped to his pocket, so I took it.’

‘Holy shit what happened?! Are you okay?!’

‘Yeah its fine Karkat! He was just talking but with a very short space between us. I was saved by the bell! Quite literally, the bell rang for us to leave and he backed off.’ She said, seeming more proud of her pickpocketing skills than worried about an attempted assault upon her.

‘Hmph. Fine. So yeah, where and how do I tell when?’

‘Leave your room at 11:35, that when the guards do their changeovers.’

‘How the fuck do you know that?!’

‘I waited up the other day and listened!’ she said, her pride bursting through again. ‘and we’ll meet in the store cupboard near the exit in block 5.’

‘Okay, sounds reasonable. How do I tell the time?’

‘Here.’ She said as she quickly passed you the watch under the table.

‘What the fuck? How are you going to tell the time then?!?’

‘Oh, I have my…’ she paused for a second ‘sources.’

You eye her suspiciously and then just decide to leave her be.

‘Okay, what then?’ you ask

‘At exactly 11:43 we’ll get out and run out the exit. By then the guards will probably all be trying to get a view of the eclipse, so that might give us a bit of extra cover. We get out, I’ll get us to the hole in the fence and we’ll run from there, straight out from the fence, about a kilometre away there should be some rocks or something to give us some cover from the sun for the rest of the day. When we’re there, we should take turns keeping watch and sleeping, because as soon as night comes, we’ve got to keep walking. If we head in a straight line from the rocks and the compound, we should find him within that night.’

‘And if we don’t find this guy?’ you dare to ask.

‘We will, Karkat. We will find him.’ She says cheerfully, though you detect a threatening undertone to her voice.

‘Okay, if you say so.’ You still have your doubts, but you’ll leave it at that.

‘So, can you give me a recap of what I said?’ she asks.

‘Leave room at 11:35, get to end store cupboard in block five then bust the fuck out of here at 11:43.’

‘Yep! That’s it!’ she said cheerfully as she stashed the piece of bread she was given in her shirt.

‘You know you really should eat some of that.’

‘I will.’ She says. ‘I’ll eat some of the pieces I have in my room, so the older pieces don’t go mouldy.’

Why the fuck didn’t you think of that. You stow away the bread in your pocket and intend on doing the same as Aradia.

When the bell rings, you get up and begin to stumble out of the mess hall towards your room, giving Aradia a quick wave as she says goodbye.

Chapter 16: SOLLUX: Re-cap

Chapter Text

For the past two nights and days, you’d been wandering out here in the desert.

Both your shoulders were killing you from the weight of your bag which you’d continuously transferred shoulder to shoulder only to find it didn’t help.

Of a day, you’d had to curl up face down on the sand with your bed sheet cloak over you and let the sand blow over and cover you from the sun. It had gotten really fucking hot and you’d got nearly no sleep, but that wasn’t anything unusual.

Despite your attempt to save the water for as long as possible, you’d nearly finished a whole jar. That left two for you, Aradia and co. you really hope they bring their jar full of water because two jars isn’t gonna last the three of you a trip across the desert.

Also, the wind. The wind has been a fucking nightmare. No one will ever understand your intense hatred for the wind (platonic hatred, of course). I just seemed intent on knowing you over, blowing sand in your face, getting sand on your food and in your water.

The wind was a fucking bitch and it knew it.

You really hope it either wasn’t as windy or as sandy on Aradia’s end, otherwise the rock-face that somehow just juts out of the fucking ground may well be covered up by a sand dune and they won’t be able to find it.

Wow, don’t even get you started on sand dunes.

One minute you’d climbed the damn thing just to see the winds practically blown the whole damn thing away and then there’s another one directly in front of you.

Also, the worst thing about this escape, was not in fact the looming threat of your impending doom, it was the anxiety you just couldn’t shake.

What if Aradia strayed a little too far from where she was supposed to be heading and missed you completely?

What if they went the wrong direction from the rock face?

What if they had to stay at the rock face for whatever reason?

What if they didn’t even make it to the rock face?

What if they couldn’t find it?

What if they got caught before they’d even left the compound?

What if their plan got found out before the day even arrived?

What if they had just decided to call it all off entirely?

Either way, they’d end up caught or culled, and you’d be left standing alone in the desert until you died.

You’d told yourself a thousand times already that you’re just being stupid and to stop worrying, even though you know from experience that being told to stop worrying doesn’t help anxiety one single fucking bit.

Anyway, you will continue to try you very fucking best to ignore it.

And just keep telling yourself that she’ll be there.

Chapter 17: Arts4u

Chapter Text

the mining compound

This is from Karkats memory/nightmare thing when he got sent down into the cave.

fact: on just about each piece of paper is written "Sollux" at the top and signed with "Aradia" at the bottom. There is a single piece of paper on Sollux's wall that has an actual message on it.

Tav's crate with the note

Karkat after he was beaten.

Chapter 18: ESCAPE – PART ONE: KARKAT: Bust the fuck out.

Chapter Text

You lie awake in your bed, watch clutched in your hand and stare at the roof. You can’t help but what it’s gonna be like when you leave this place. You won’t miss it one bit. Okay, you suppose you may miss this spot right here, where no one cares what you do and no one bosses you around and its relatively comfortable and sort of warm and you feel sort of safe.

You suppose that when you get out no one will boss you around and you can be comfortable and warm somewhere else, but you probably won’t exactly be safe again for a long time.

The world isn’t a safe place for low-bloods.

The world is most definitely not a safe place for mutant bloods pretending they’re low-bloods.

You’ll probably be on the run for the rest of your life and you know that that’s hardly any way to live but anything would be better than this shithole.

You contemplate closing your eyes and falling asleep for a moment before you remember that there would be no way to wake you up in time if you did.

You flick open the pocket watch and check the time.

You remember when you were little and your Lusus taught you how to tell the time, but that memory only makes you miss your Lusus so you try and push the thought out of your mind.

Anyway, the time has just gone eleven.

Half an hour till you can go.

You think over what you have to do.

Mouthing the words, you remember, 11:35 you have to get the fuck out of your room while the guards are distracted, then get the fuck over to block 5 and to the last storage cupboard. You start to feel a little worried as you’ve only been over to 5th block a couple of times and worry that you might not find the cupboard, or accidentally burst into a staff room or something.

You try not to think about it.

When you get into the cupboard, you sit either with or wait for Aradia. At just before 11:43 you get out of the cupboard and run out the door, following Aradia. You also begin to worry about this as you feel a small twinge of pain in your ankle.

You follow her to the fence and out the gap (you’re still nervous about that god damned wire fence) and run out into the desert.

Okay. Sounds good.

You check the watch again to see that its 11:28.

God you hope this watch has the right time.

You watch it as it so painfully slowly ticked around to 11:32

11:33

11:34

You slowly creep out of your bed and quietly make your way across the floor.

You press your ear at the door to hear a couple of guards talking as they passed by.

11:35

Silence from the corridor.

You quickly but quietly open the door and close it shut behind you.

The lights in the corridor are on, which makes for bad cover if someone walks by.

You quietly run down toward 3rd block, which is attached to 5th, your feet make a quiet slapping sound as they hit the ground, and for the first time in your life you are grateful
you do not own a pair of shoes. Each time you come to a corner, you so carefully look around to make sure no one is coming by.

You reached the door to block 5 and run straight through to the end.

You stop at the last door on the right.

You can hear footsteps and voices ringing through the hallways behind you.

Blood-pusher pounding in your chest, you reach for the handle of the unlabelled door.

The voices are getting closer and you have no choice but to wrench the door open and through yourself inside.

Oh shit.

.

.

.

It’s dark in here.

And OH MY GOD SOMETHING JUST TOUCHED YOUR FOOT.

‘Karkat?’ says a tiny voice from the floor.

‘Aradia?’

‘You made it’ she whispers.

‘Of course I fucking made it did you really think I’d be as much of an idiot as to get caught?’ you harshly whisper back.

‘Of course I didn’t.’ she whispered with a breathy chuckle.

‘Now what.’ You ask.

‘What’s the time?’ she asks rather than answering your question.

’11.39’ you answer holding the watch close to your face and leaning towards the tiny crack of light creeping through beneath the door.

‘Good. We still have a few minutes. Sit down Karkat, you’ll need all the rest you can get.’

She seemed so calm about all this and it was starting to weird you out.

‘Here, take this.’ She said, holding something near your face which you could only just see due to the lack of light. You suppose that if you weren’t used to being in the dark all the time you wouldn’t be able to see it at all.

‘What is it’ you ask as you take it from her hands. It feels like some sort of cotton or whatever that shit is.

‘It’s a cloak. Sort of. It’s a sheet from my bed. I tied a knot in the front so it has a sort of hood and will stay on your head. It’ll provide a little bit of extra protection from the sun. Just make sure to pull it off before you go through the fence okay?’

‘What why?’ you ask, feeling uncertain about that stupid fucking fence again.

‘It might get caught on the loose wires.’ Oh fuck. You better fucking remember to take it off.

‘As soon as you’re through, put it back on again, okay? What time is it now?’

’11:41. Just about to go 42.’

‘Okay, get ready to go. Let me go first, because I’ll need to lead okay?’

‘Okay.’

You sit there for a bit over thirty seconds.

‘Twenty seconds.’

‘Okay you ready?’

‘Yep.’

‘Ten seconds’ you say as you see the light pour through the door as she bursts out. You leap out behind her.

She busts through the door that leads outside, hood already on.

You put you hood on as you run, wishing you’d done it while you were still inside because ouch, that small amount of light kinda stings.

Hood on and green moon completely over the sun. Safe. From the light at least.

You run after her as she navigates past buildings and store sheds, leaping obstacles as she goes.

You’re starting to feel good about this until you hear a voice from behind you.

‘Hey!’ oh shit

‘Wait for me!’ oh god it’s that fuckwit that was sitting behind you the other day.

‘Shut the fuck up!’ you yell back to him.

‘HEY! THE SLAVES HAVE ESCAPED!’ screams a voice from far behind. Right now the guards would be rushing to secure the e=other slaves and as soon as they were done, they’d be after you. Except the one in the watch tower, oh shit they were after you now.

‘Fire! Fire! You heard one call out. Fire? You hadn’t seen or smelled any smoke, where could there be a fir- oh they were shooting at you that would explain it. You run behind a shed and stop for a moment waiting for Aradia to continue.

‘What are you doing?!’ hissed the other troll.

‘Shut the fuck up before I punch you.’ You warn.

‘What!? They’ll be here in a second! We’re gonna get caught!’

‘Just wait,’ said Aradia as the sound of gunshots stopped. Clearly terrified, the other troll was trembling.

‘They’ve stopped, see? We can go!’

A small ‘shh’ came from Aradia.

‘Okay, if you guys are gonna just wait here to be culled; I’m getting out of here.’ He said as he shoved past the both of you and ran out toward the fence. He got about twenty metres before the sound of machine guns started up again and burgundy splattered everywhere.

‘Oh my god’ you heard Aradia say quietly.

After a few seconds you ask what you would do now.

‘Follow me.’ She said as she wove her way through the gaps between a few sheds and then ran straight out in the opposite direction of the watch tower. Close behind, you made it to the next set of sheds before the sound of bullet rain started up again.

From here, the guards in the tower shouldn’t be able to get a clear shot, but the guards on foot should be here any second. You both walk out of the cover and jump straight back in when you feel the strong heat stinging on your covered skin.

The first moon was passing over and the next one was just starting to cover it.

Half your time was up.

‘Run!’ Aradia hissed and darted out over the grounds toward the fence. Though the light stung, you ran as fast as you could behind her. The sun was still partially uncovered, but this meant the guards would have retreated to shade and the guards in the watch tower would have gone back inside. This was your chance to get out without getting your head fucking blown off.

Aradia’s just metres from the fence and you are just metres behind.

Instantly, you feel the nausea start up in your stomach as you begin to worry about the fence. No time to think of that now though.

Within a second, Aradia has torn of her sheet-cloak and got it bundled in her hand, leaving her exposed to the sun. She dives through the fence and keeps running, instantly beginning to put the cloak back on.

Now it’s your turn.

You tear off the cloak and scrunch it up in your hands.

You run at the fence, looking at the hole, its edges a mess of tangled wire.

It’s a small gap, you worry you won’t fit through.

You dive straight at the gap and-

Oh my fucking god.

Chapter 19: Let's see what the fuck happened to Tavros seen as he's seemingly disappeared in the last god knows how many chapters. TAVROS: Wake up.

Chapter Text

You wake to a fluffy nose nuzzling at your face.

‘What is it Tinkerbull?’ you ask your seemingly panicked Lusus. Now that he’s got your attention, he flies over to the window and brushes away the curtain.

‘W-What are you doing?!’ you almost yell. The sunlight pours in, but it’s dim, and doesn’t burn. Curiosity gets the better of you and you get off your bed and walk to the window. The sun is up, and though it hurts your eyes to look, it appears the emerald-green moon has gone over the sun, and the fuchsia one is close behind.

None of the guards are outside.

The forest is close by, you might be able to make it if the moon doesn’t suddenly move away from the sun.

You take your little bucket- wait, you really shouldn’t call it that- crate with its little amount of water and your tiny jousting lance and leave your hive.

You close the door quietly, and with Tinkerbull on your shoulder, you make a break for the forest on the outskirts of the village.

Suddenly, the light starts intensifying again and begins to burn your skin.

In a panic, Tinkerbull flies off your shoulder and darts to the nearest stack of wood for shelter.

You’re glad he’s safe, but you’ve got nowhere to hide. You are going to die. Panicked, you stumble and tip out the contents of your water-crate thing and decide to just dump it.
You run, weary with dread, certain of your imminent doom, you blindly blunder through the series of half-constructed hives, tripping over and crashing in to things.

You’re just about to give up when the light dims down again.

The fuchsia moon has gone over the sun.

You look around, Tinkerbull was nowhere in sight.

‘Tinkerbull!’ you call in a harsh whisper. With no response of movement or such, you call again. When he still doesn’t come, you decide to take a leap of faith and hope to god no one hears you.

‘TINKERBULL!’ sure enough, it’s a few second before he rounds the corner and flies straight into your arms. You are so relieved to see him and you just want to hold him tightly in your arms.

However, now is not the time for hugs. You run towards the edge of the village and toward the forest. It takes you all of three minutes at full-speed to reach the first few trees.

You don’t stop running until you get under some thicker canopy, with better cover. Only then do you collapse against the trunk of a tree, panting furiously in an attempt to catch your breath.

You know you really should keep moving. As soon as they know you’re gone, they’ll send some guards or some wild beast that not even you can control to punish you for escaping.

You really should keep moving, but you were tired before you left and with everything that’s happened in the last ten minutes or so has completely worn you out, so with Tinkerbull curled up on your lap, you close your eyes and fall asleep.

Chapter 20: ESCAPE – PART TWO: ARADIA: Don’t stop, Keep running.

Chapter Text

You dive through the gap in the fence and pull your hood straight back over your head, slowing down a little to do so without getting tangled. You hear the clang of wire from behind you as Karkat came through as well. The sound of his loud footsteps slow down so you turn to see why.

He’s just standing there, looking at his hands as if he’s inspecting them, looking around at the fence with an expression on his face of pure relief.
‘Karkat, hurry up! We can’t stop now!’ you call.

He snaps out of his little daze and darts after you. The ground here is flat for a while before the ground dips into the desert, so you really need to run to cover before the guards come back out.

With Karkat caught up with you now, you take his hand and drag him along with you. You feel safer with his hand in yours as you know you can’t lose him now.

Until he trips on a rock and is sent flying to land face first on the rocky ground.
In any other situation, it probably would have been hilarious. Though you still need to keep going and he’s probably hurt. You help him up without much consideration of his potential injuries and with his hand in yours, keep running.

You run towards the desert at your very fastest. When you reach the edge of the flat plains, where the ground then dips down into the sand dunes, the slope is a lot deeper than you had expected.

And taller.

‘We’re going down there?’ Karkat asked nervously.

‘Yes.’ You said slowly back. The slope was about ten metres high, and a long way to fall, but the two of you have just minutes until the eclipse ends.

‘Quickly, but be careful!’ you say as you carefully drop yourself down off the edge. You climbed down a few metres, but then found sliding down the earthy, gravelly surface was much quicker, then dropped the last metre or so.

With Karkat just behind you, you take his hand again and half run, half climb the nearest dune.

When you’d reached the top, you notice that it, though by a little in some cases, is the tallest.

You slide down it and run across the sand to the next one. From the top of that, you can see rocks sticking out of the sand.

From there, you let go of Karkat’s hand and you both make a mad dash across the smaller dunes towards the rocks.

The closer you get, the larger the rock formation appears to be.

You dive into the small space of its slight shade and await Karkat.

He appears to have fallen back quite a bit since you let go of him, and you are certain there are but a few seconds till the fuchsia moon passes by the sun enough to let the light through again.

‘Karkat, hurry up!’ you called. ‘Karkat, hurry!’

Though his movements become slowly, and anxiety begins to claw away at the edge of your mind. Well, more so than it already did.

‘Hurry!’

He still gave no response, but instead, tripped and rolled his way to the bottom of the dune. It took him a few seconds to stand back up.

‘KARKAT!’ you dart back out of the protective shade and grab him by his sheet-cloak, pulling him towards the shade.

You dart back in, to see though you had helped, he is still a few metres away. And the moon began to pass.

Within a few seconds, a little light had gone to fully intense bright beams of sun bearing down on everything within sight.

You have to close your eyes.

You hear a scream of pain, just seconds before a large weight had plonked itself straight onto you.

‘Karkat? Are you alright?’ you ask gently. You feel a small nod against the front of your right shoulder as he tightly clings to you.

‘You’re exhausted.’ You say. ‘You get some rest and I’ll stay up to make sure we stay in the shade.’

He shakes his head with a little “hm mm” sound. ‘we’re not gonna move anywhere, why can’t we both sleep?’ he mumbles into your shoulder.

‘What if one of us rolled over in our sleep and into the sun? What if, when the sun moves across the sky it hits us here behind the rocks at a different angle?’

‘This rock is fuckin’ huge.’ He says. ‘The sun won’t get us.’

‘Just listen Karkat, I’m fine right now, and you’re hurt and exhausted.’ You say as you get a look at his scratched-up and grazed face, now covered in sand.

‘Hmph. Fine.’ He says as he rolls down into the narrow gap between you and the beginning of the rock formation. As he falls asleep, you get a clean piece of your thin cloak and try to wipe away some of the sand.

He falls asleep. You decide to wake him after a few hours and then switch, that is of course, if the sun doesn’t move around enough to change the angle of the shadow.

-

You had planned on letting him sleep a good six hours. The light didn’t change much, so he could have. That was, if he hadn’t kept waking up from daymares screaming about wires and fences.

Chapter 21: KARKAT:Walk

Chapter Text

You and Aradia have been walking for a few hours now.

Your legs feel like they’re going to collapse from underneath you, and you are so, so very hungry.

You hadn’t slept well during the day. You kept having daymares about the wire fence. You had thought you would have stopped dreaming about that fucking thing after you got through it, but no. they only seemed to get worse.

And god damn is it hot out here. Who knew the desert was just so fucking… hot.
It really doesn’t help that you are trying to save water. If it were up to you, you would just down the entire contents of that fucking jar. But no, survival apparently comes first.

You are starving too. Well, starving more than you usually are. You’d eaten a little of your bread while Aradia was sleeping, but not much. Every time you pull a piece of bread out of your pocket to nibble on, Aradia will smack your wrists and tell you to put it away.

‘Not until we find him.’ She’d say, still less than willing to reveal his name. Habit, you guess. But you suppose the whole “no eating till we meet up with random loser guy” thing makes sense. Neither of you have any idea how long you’d be out in the desert, so you know that it really is best to save as much food as you can.

Also, earlier tonight the wind had decided to be a fucker and start a fucking sand storm all up in your gad damned faces. Well, okay, that was a bit of an exaggeration, there wasn’t enough to be a storm but it was a fucking pain in the ass.

It’s well past midnight, a quick flick of your watch tells you that its 3:12 exactly. You’ve got about three hours max until the sun comes up, and you’re pretty sure you’ve dealt with enough of the sun’s bullshit for about a sweep.

The moons aren’t up tonight, because they were up during the day, (duh) and therefore, you have next to no light to guide you through the desert.

Also, fun fact, weird crazy troll-less Lusii have been known to wander through the desert. As a matter of fact, you were fucking attacked by one earlier. Well, you think it was a

Lusus. And, you hope it was troll-less otherwise that kid would be raised underneath the fucking sand. Anyhow, the both of you had to run like hell.

But anyway. For now you’ve just got to keeeeeeeeeeeeep walking.

Aradia nudges your arm with her elbow and stops, interrupting your internal ranting.
‘look.’ she whispers in a way that you can’t tell if she’s calm or panicked. She points straight out in front of the both of you. Her facial expression is a mix of calm and worry.

And you can’t even see what the fuck she’s even pointing at.

Chapter 22: SOLLUX: Die alone in the desert.

Chapter Text

Oh my god.

They’re not coming. she’s not coming.

She’s dead or lost or didn’t leave at all and you’re terrified because she’s either been caught and punished or she’s already dead and you can’t know because you can’t hear her and oh my god

You’re standing here alone in the desert.

You’ve been standing here for hours she’s not coming you’re gonna dies alone, starving and dehydrated in the desert and you’re just fucking standing you can’t bring yourself to move or even sit down and you can’t eat or drink because you’re giving it all to her and she’s not coming.

You can feel the last of your strength fading from your body and you think you’re about to pass out.

Chapter 23: ARADIA: Point like a crazy person and squee at your friend.

Chapter Text

‘Uhh,’ says Karkat as his eyes dart around in front of him, trying to find what you’re pointing at.

‘Right there!’ you say, so excited, you may just jump out of your own skin. ‘It’s him! It’s him! That’s him right there!’

‘Oh it’s a troll im supposed to be looking at.’ He states, apparently still not entirely sure where it is he’s supposed to be looking.

‘Yes! He’s there!’ you almost squee. ‘Sollux!’ you yell, loudly across the gap as you begin walking towards him. ‘Sollux!’

Karkat just watches you as you begin to make your way across the sandy dunes towards your long since seen childhood friend. Karkat gives you a strange look, to which you pay no mind, then looks up with an expression of slight distrust toward your dear friend, who you still aren’t entirely sure he can even see where he is yet. Sollux himself doesn’t seem to see you; he seems to be facing off to the side a bit. As of yet, he doesn’t appear to have heard you either. You continue walking calmly towards him, ever so slowly closing the gap between the two of you.

‘Sollux!’ you call. ‘Sollux I’m over here, stupid!’

He looks to be staring intently out into the desert sands, with an almost trance-like intensity.

‘Hey, asshole!’ Karkat decides to join in, apparently annoyed by Sollux’s obliviousness.

‘Solluuuuuuuuuuuux!’ you call extra loudly this time. To your absolute delight, you notice his head twitch up, and then snap towards you.

‘Sollux we’re here!’ you call, waving your arms at him, still with a huge grin on your face. ‘Sollux, we made it!’

He stares at you blankly for a few moments, before a tiny smile creeps onto his face and the rest of his features relax.

You let out a giggle of absolute joy. You are so happy. The three of you are alive and now you are all together. The three of you can all make it safely from here, that you are sure of. You think that, despite how tired and hungry and thirsty you are, and how many sores and bruises cover your body, and all the stress and fear from the previous day, this day now, this day has to be the best day in your entire life. Which, really wasn’t that hard to achieve, since most of your life has been spent slaving away in a dark, dirty mine.

You hear Sollux slowly mumble something.

‘y… you’re… here…’ he says with a small smile.

‘Sollux?’

Suddenly, panic rushes through you.

He turns his head down, and collapses into the sand.

‘Sollux!’

Chapter 24: KARKAT: Holy shit, Asshole down!

Chapter Text

Okay, fuck.

You just came all this way to find this guy, and you’re pretty sure he just died.

You honestly don’t give two shits about the guy, but you didn’t come all this way for nothing when you could have just headed straight out to the edge of the desert, so, you run out after Aradia, (slowly, because you know, you’re still kind of in fucking pain) towards the spot where the asshole collapsed.

‘Sollux! Sollux!’ called Aradia as she ran toward him, sprinting, despite her sore and tired legs.

When you get over to him, you see Aradia has already flipped him onto his back and is checking his pulse.

‘He’s alive’ she said with a sigh of relief. ‘But only just. Karkat, where’s the water?’

You look around and she she’d dropped the jar at the bottom of the dune, so you run down to get it. Thankfully, they sand is pretty soft, so the jar didn’t break. You run back up and hand it to Aradia, who immediately unscrews the lid and hoists the ass- Sollux up to lean against her and begins slowly tipping water into his mouth.

‘He’s boiling up.’ She says after putting the jar down and resting her hand upon his forehead. ‘he’s probably been standing here for hours.’

After about ten minutes of her giving him water every minute or so, he starts coughing and spluttering as she tries to gently tip some more down his throat.

You crouch about a metre in front of the two and just watch.

‘Rise and shine, asshole.’ You say. Aradia shoots you a killer glare. He begins to blink open his eyes and holy fuck what is wrong with his eyes.

‘Who- who the fuck are you…’ he says, pausing to cough in the middle of his sentence.

‘None of your fucking business, nook-stain.’ This time Aradia just rolls her eyes at you.

‘Ugh, who…?’ he says as he suddenly becomes aware of the fact he’s being held in Aradia’s arms. ‘AA?’

‘Hello Sollux, long time, no see.’ She says with a gentle smile as he looks up at her, still rested up against her.

‘Heh, real long time, huh?’ he says quietly, smiling up at her with his weird double fangs sticking out over his bottom lip.

‘How long has it been since you’ve eaten?’ she asks, suddenly with a threatening undertone to her words, all the while keeping her sickeningly sweet smile. Sollux’s smile suddenly drops.

‘Uh… well, uh…’

‘How long has it been since you drank any water?’

‘Um, well…’ he stutters back, looking more and more like a child in trouble.

‘Here.’ Says Aradia as she pulls out the remnants of the bread from her pocket and tries to shove it straight into his mouth.

‘What, no i-‘

‘Eat it.’

‘but-‘

‘Eat. It.’

Okay wow, you never thought anyone could look so damn terrifying whilst still smiling.

Reluctantly, Sollux allows her to shove the bread into his mouth. Only after he’s swallowed it, does Aradia allow him to sit up.

‘So, where to now?’ she asks, all cheerfulness returned to her voice and face.

‘The border. Should be about twenty kilometres from here.’ He says. Now you are starting to detect a slight lisp to his voice.

‘Okay, one question.’ She asks.

‘Shoot.’

‘The border of what?’

‘Wh- Are you serious?’ he asks.

‘Um…’ is all he gets in response.

‘The border of the slave district. The edge of the desert?’

‘Oh… and how far is twenty kilometres on what we just walked?’

‘Four times as much.’

‘Oh. Damn… well, where are we going to rest for the day?’ she asks.

‘Here.’

‘Are you fucking crazy?’ you decide to make an input, and not a very helpful one at that. ‘We’ll be dead before midday!’

‘No we won’t. You’re just stupid.’ He says. What a fucking jerk. ‘Who the fuck are you anyway?’

‘Oh! Sollux, this is Karkat! Karkat, meet Sollux!’ Aradia chimes in.

‘Where the fuck have I heard that name before…?’ Sollux asks. Presumably to himself.

‘Oh, you’ve probably heard it everywhere; Karkat is a really fucking common name after all. Back at the mines, you could just yell out Karkat! And every other asshole or so would turn around to look at you. Well, I bet there are just thousands of Karkats fucking around out there, you probably knew hundreds of them back at whatever shithole you just got the fuck out of. Unless of course you’re just some random asshole living out in the desert for the sake of it, and I’m not one to go around fucking disrespecting peoples life choices, but that’s pretty fucked up. If that’s the case, Then no, I have no fucking idea where the fuck you’ve heard the name Karkat before. If that’s not the case, then I still have no fucking clue wherever the fuck you’ve heard it before.’ You take in quite a large breath.

‘Karkat Vantass, right?’

You begin to start another rant on how fucking rude it is for him to call you Vant-ass but you only get a few words in before you do a mental double-take and realize he knows your name.

‘What the- who the fuck are you?!’

Chapter 25: SOLLUX: If anyone starts singing ‘it’s a small world after all!’ you swear to god you are going to kill them.

Chapter Text

Well, well, well.

It seems Aradia’s friends with the asshole that you used to know.

He didn’t live far from you when you were a kid. God he was the most annoying and childish little shit. Whenever you left your hive, he would follow you around and he just wouldn’t shut up.

He was an okay kid though. If you could look past all the shit he gave you. Hmm, nah, he was a right little shit.

And now he’s just sitting there, mouth open like some stupid fish, in total awe that you know his name. You know it’s Vantas, you just thought you’d try to piss him off a little.

‘Do you remember the name Captor?’ you ask with a smirk.

‘No I fucking- Captor? Sollux Captor?’

‘The one and only.’

‘You two know each other?’ Aradia asks, a little confused, but still cheerful enough.

‘This guy’s the fucking shit face that fucking blew up my computer!’ Karkat yells.

‘You had a computer?’ Aradia asks, a lot more confused now.

‘It was just a shitty old one my Lusus stole, I only had it for about a quarter of a sweep and he put a fucking disease on it!’

‘It’s called a virus, nook-stain’ you throw in his own insult in in an attempt to mock him.

‘Whatever. The point is, he blew it up.’

‘It wouldn’t have even worked anyway.’ You say.

‘I don’t care! Just shut up!’

Silence falls upon the three of you for a few moments before you decide to break it.

‘You hungry?’ you ask, directing it more at Aradia than Karkat.

‘Oh, no, we’re fine. We just ate a full three course meal at the last restaurant we passed on our way here, we definitely-’

‘I was trying to offer you food, idiot.’

His face goes blank as he snaps his head towards you.

‘You have food?’ he asks.

‘No shit, I just came out to do a several day trek across the fucking desert and didn’t think to bring anything with me.’

You hear him mutter “you don’t have to be such a smart-ass” as he turns his head away from you.

You reach over to where you dumped your bag a few hours before and drag it closer. You pull out a barely touched piece of bread and pull off a generously large chunk for Aradia.

‘Here.’

‘Oh no, just give me a smaller bit, it’ll last longer-’

‘AA, I have plenty more and it’s gonna start to go mouldy if we don’t eat it soon.’

She gives in, and takes a bite.

Karkat pulls out a small piece of old, dirty bread from his pocket and begins to nibble on it. With a sigh, you pull off a piece (not quite as big as Aradia’s piece) and throw it to him.

‘Hey KK, catch.’

‘Uh, thanks.’ He says, throwing the tiny old piece in the sand and starting to eat the new stuff.

You notice Aradia glaring at you, so you pull off a piece and eat some yourself.

‘How the fuck are we supposed to be getting shelter for the day?’ Karkat asks after a minute or so, mouth full of bread.

You hold up your makeshift cloak, which you notice is considerable thicker than Aradia and Karkat’s.

‘We lay under this.’

‘You have got to be kidding me.’

‘Nope, I’m pretty serious.’

‘I don’t care if you’re theriouth, I’m not getting under that thing with you.’ He says, mocking your lisp.

‘Okay. You can sit under your own sheet and probably get fried like a cluck-beast within the first hour of the day.’

‘We don’t talk about fried cluck-beast here.’ He says.

‘Uh, why?’

‘Because I’m still fucking hungry, that’s why!’

-

Your arguments with Karkat went on for the next hour or so before you all lay down under the three of your sheets and blanket put together. You left your bag of food and water outside this time, though made sure it was properly tied up. Aradia lies between the two of you, since Karkat refused to be anywhere near you, because you are apparently a “bulge-sucking asshole who has a fucked up face”. It’s been two hours since the sun came up, and you were left awake to make sure the no one moved too much and un-tucked the edges of the blanket from underneath you all. Aradia is snuggled up at your side, and you can’t tell if you’re happier to see her again, or happier to know that she’s safe.

You hear Karkat begin to stir from his sleep. When he wakes, you’ll tell him it’s his turn to take watch and take your turn to fall asleep.

You’re very tired, sore, still thirsty and still hungry, and you’re already sick to death of that asshole, but today would have to be one of the best in your life.

Today, you found AA.

Chapter 26: ARADIA: Do the timey thing

Chapter Text

Sunset is probably your favourite time of the day.

Its light out, like it is in the night, but the sun gives off a different light than the moon.

Late sunset is probably the earliest part of the night you can be out, its just the right time so the sun can still be bright, but not damaging. You’ve never really understood why it does that, how it can be up but not burn. But hey! What do you know anyway? You are a rust blood after all.

Sunset and sunrise are the only times you can be out under the sun and not get burnt.

Anyway, you can enjoy the bright, yellowed light from the setting sun, and not have to worry about getting inside.

You’ve all only been up for twenty minutes or so, but you seem to have covered a bit of distance.

It’s been three days since you’d met up with Sollux. You’d caught up on all the things you’d both missed in the sweeps you’d been apart pretty quickly, since neither of you really had many stories to tell. You had found it fascinating though when Sollux told you he’d built engines and such for ships in the imperial fleet. Karkat called him a liar, but you thought it was pretty amazing.

You talk occasionally, about random little things to break long silences. Every now and then, Sollux and Karkat would bicker about most anything. Karkat would challenge something Sollux said, or Sollux would try and prove Karkat wrong. Karkat just kept getting angrier at him; however Sollux seemed to be genuinely amused by Karkat’s frustrations. You detect a possible future blackrom between those two. You don’t know all that much really about romance, but you think they seem to be perfect for each other.

Every now and then, when you had nothing to talk about, and the two had stopped their bickering, you would begin to hum or sing. There were a few tunes and songs you remembered from before your collection day, when you were taken in to the mines. You haven’t sung for years, because you really never felt like it until now. Now you were free and given you were still hungry and thirsty and your lack of hydration made your throat scratchy and it hurt a little to speak, you still felt happy enough to sing. Your voice must be terrible from disuse, but you sing anyway. Sollux and Karkat refuse to join you, so you sing loud enough for all three of you. You sing the songs your Lusus taught you, you sing old songs and songs that were new around the time from before your collection day, you sing lullabies and cradle songs, and old, old songs in the old Alternian that nobody remembers anymore.

By the end of the day, you have sung or hummed every song you could remember. And to your surprise, you remember quite a lot.

Karkat gets all angry when you try repeating a tune from earlier and starts going on about how he’s heard it already and he’s getting sick of all these stupid songs. Sollux seems pleased to hear them all again, and he gets all defensive when Karkat starts attacking your choice of song.

Sollux says it should only be another day or so until you reach the desert borders, and can finally rest easily under the shade of… perhaps some trees? A cluster of rocks? Perhaps even a cave! What you find most exciting and equally terrifying about all this is that you have no idea what to expect in the days ahead of you.

But for now, it’s time to eat and drink so you can all get under cover.

Chapter 27: ???????: do the ???????? thing.

Chapter Text

‘The psionic got away’ says the troll before you as he got down to his knees.

‘What?’ oh great. What timing for bad news.

‘The psionic got away, along with two rust bloods from the iron mines in that same area.’

Well, this most certainly isn’t good.

This won’t do at all.

‘What exactly happened?’ you ask.

‘We believe that the psionic had been communicating with the rust bloods and used the double solar eclipse as a distraction to get away. The psionic got out before that though, he snuck out while the guards were preoccupied and used his psionic power to get the rest of the way out. We couldn’t catch him. We have trolls scouring the desert for him as we speak. How should we punish him when he’s caught?’

‘Don’t punish him. What he’s got coming for him is punishment enough.’

‘I see.’ Says the troll, looking a little dis-heartened. His face seems to light back up again as he says ‘what about the rust bloods?’

‘Leave them.’

‘But-‘

‘Re-call all your men from the desert and call off all searches.’

‘But your-‘

‘Leave. Them. Be.’

‘Very well.’

‘A couple of escaped rust bloods never harmed anyone. Wandering around in the desert they’d soon die. But accompanied by a troll as smart as Sollux Captor… I have a feeling they’ll play straight into our hands. This ought to be very very interesting.’

‘Very well. I’ll call off the searches immediately.’ The troll says as he stands, bows, and leaves your presence.

This whole situation was reminding you of that game you’d learned from some creatures of another race. Chess, a game of strategy. To win, you needed to know when to attack, when to hold your ground and when to retreat. You’d made your move, now you could do nothing until your opposition made theirs.

‘Your move, Captor.’

Chapter 28: SOLLUX: Trees do not fucking grow in the desert.

Chapter Text

You are fairly certain that you’re getting pretty close to the border. It should take you another night at the most. The three of you are still making your way across the dunes when you hear something.

‘Yeah, the captain said we gotta get out of here.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Dunno. Callin’ off all the searches.’

The voices are getting closer.

‘Holy shit get down!’ you hiss at the other two. The three of you hit the ground and you toss your cloak over the three of you and quickly throw a couple handfuls of sand over it.

‘What? Why? If he’d given us another day we could have found the little piss-blood!’

They were looking for you.

‘Yeah, yeah, quit your whining. Least we ain’t stuck out in the desert anymore.’

‘Yeah whatever.’

They kept mumbling and bickering to themselves as they made their way along to where ever they were headed.

‘Holy shit who the fuck were they?’ Karkat says as he quickly sits up and flicks the blanket off.

‘They were after me.’ You say quietly.

‘What? Surely they would have given up searching for us all by now!’ says Aradia sounding concerned.

‘No, they weren’t after you.’ You say, voice getting quieter.

‘What? What the ever-loving fuck would they want with a useless sack of shit like you, Captor?’ Karkat growls.

‘Nothing.’ You say as you stand and begin to walk on.

‘Sollux, is there something you’re not telling us?’ Aradia says as she gets up and catches up with you. She holds onto you by the sleeve of you shirt and looks up at your face. She looks worried, and you don’t want to make her worry any more than she already is.

‘They probably just want me back because I was the only half competent mechanic there. But it’s fine; they can find some other stupid asshole to replace me.’

Her expression relaxes and she loosens her grip on your shirt.

‘All right. Let’s get moving in case they come back.’ She says as she walks on.

You think you’ll keep the truth hidden from her. It’s not that you don’t trust her, because you do, more than anyone else, it’s just that you don’t think she deserves to have her mind plagued with yet another problem she feels she needs to watch out for. Because you know that if you tell her, she’ll feel the need to protect you above everything else, because that’s just what she’s like. She’ll worry needlessly and stress over keeping you all safe a lot more than she will with things as they are.

You’ll certainly keep the truth hidden from Karkat. You don’t trust that asshole one bit.

Okay, you’ll admit you trust him more than you should, but you certainly aren’t going to admit that to him. Or anyone. Ever.

You all walk on for another hour or so, before Aradia stops you both.

‘Look!’ she says as she points out towards nothing. ‘Look! Can’t you see it? There’s a tree!’

Sure enough, once you’d focused on exactly where she was pointing, you could see a small tree poking out from the sands in the distance.

‘I don’t see any fucking tree.’ Karkat pipes in.

‘That’s because you’re a stupid asshole.’ You snap back.

‘Oh, that coming from a guy who can’t even say “stupid asshole”.’

You turn to give him another comeback when Aradia steps in between you.

‘Guys, now is not the time!’ she says. And she’s right. You’re all tired, you’re all sore, you’re all starving and thirsty, and here is a sings telling you how close you are from reaching your goal.

‘Fine. Let’s keep moving.’ You say as you head out toward the single tree in the distance.

Chapter 29: ARADIA: Sollux, Plants obviously do grow in the desert, stupid.

Chapter Text

Oh yes.

Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.

You have all made it to the border of the whatever-it’s-supposed-to-be-called district. Which means, you are just about out of the desert.

When the three of you had made it to that little tree, you all knew there must be water nearby.

You all barely noticed as the temperature went on a slow but steady drop. As you continued, you found various grasses and plants growing in the sand. A quick kick to the ground from Sollux revealed that you are no longer walking on the massive dunes, but the sand beneath your feet is merely inches deep.

Walking is getting easier as the sand becomes shallower, and eventually you can run without the awkward slipping and sliding that comes with running on thick dry sand. As the three of you continue further, the plants get thicker, until you find the edge of the desert itself.

Where the sand comes to an end, was a small cliff-like ledge, only about a metre and a half high, making it look as though the land here had just dropped away, leaving a big hole in the ground full of sand.

The three of you climb the ledge and walk in through the mass of trees upon it.

The leafy ground is littered with little sprinkles of sand as it blew up from below.

You keep walking for a while, until you find a nice cool spot under the trees to rest. The sun is rising, but the spot you had picked has a seemingly thick enough canvas to protect you, and none of you have spoken up to prove it otherwise. Exhaustion sinks in and the three of you lay down and close your eyes before anyone can call someone up for first watch.

You all sleep all day, and it was the longest and best rest you have all had in a long time.

-

You wake to the sound of screaming.

Disoriented and confused, you sit straight up at lightning speed and awkwardly scramble to your feet.

‘Wh-what’ you hear Sollux mumble behind you as he did the same. You only notice the screaming had stopped as you notice Karkat.

Karkat is sitting up on the ground, panting, sweat running down his face.

‘K-Karkat?’ you ask cautiously, ‘Karkat are you okay?’

‘I’m- I’m fine.’ He says, but his heavy breathing doesn’t slow and he keeps his eyes wide and staring at the ground. You kneel down in front of him and look at him sadly.

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ you ask, wanting to hold your hand out to his shoulder, but fearing his reaction.

‘I’m fine! Okay? Can we just leave it at that?!’ he snaps.

‘Hey, she’s just trying to help, you don’t need to be such a dick.’ Says Sollux defensively.

‘You shut the fuck up asshole! No one asked you for your fucking input, did they? So stop being such a fucking douche for five minutes-’

‘Shut up!’ you hiss. You can easily see these two going black for each other, but you don’t particularly feel ashen towards either of them, but now is not the time to worry about that. Over all the yelling, you think maybe you might have heard something moving around in the nearby area.

‘I think something’s out there.’ You explain. The two freeze, then quietly look around to see if they can see anything.

‘What if it’s those weird stalker people again?’ asks Karkat in a whisper.

‘Weird stalker people?’ asks Sollux, keeping his voice down as well.

‘Those weirdos that were supposedly looking for you in the desert?!’ Karkat hisses.

‘Oh. I doubt it, but keep an eye out anyway.’

Karkat looks as though he was about to come back with another retort, but thought better of it.

The sound of leaves rustling suddenly has you all on high alert.

‘Shh…’ you say as you creep forward. You turn your head to notice Sollux waving his arms violently ask mouthing the words “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?” to which, you respond by pressing your finger to your lips and continuing forward.

As you approach closer to the bush where you’d first heard the noise, you notice Karkat and Sollux are following you. You also notice the crack of a twig and another rough shaking of the leaves. You are about ready to dismiss it as an animal creeping through, looking for food, when through the leaves you notice the familiar shade of yellow that colours a trolls horns.

Panic begins to rush through you, but you still feel you have to see who it is. It could be an innocent troll passing by, or it could be trolls from the compound, come to punish you, or take you back.

You reach out for the bush, and in the corner of you vision, you see Sollux lurch forward to stop you, so before he could reach you, you grab hold of a leafy brand and quickly pull it across, drawing out a small screech from the troll hiding beneath it.

You stare at the troll for a few moments.

He’s just a child, probably no older than you, crouched down and curled up defensively, with his hands over his face. He had a tuft of messy hair that you assume had once been a Mohawk, accompanied by the largest pair of horns you had seen on a troll this young, which stretched wide out of the side of his head.

As he begins to whimper in terror, you finally conclude everything is still safe.

‘Hello.’ You say gently. ‘Who are you?’

He looks up through the gaps in his fingers.

‘Uh, my name is Ta-Tavros.’

‘AA, let’s GO!’ hissed Sollux. His lisp always sounded more prominent when he whispered or hissed.

‘Shh, give me a moment.’ You say back to him. ‘Where are you from, Tavros?’

‘Uh, I’ve come from a village, I don’t really know what it was called.’ He admitted.

‘Are you a high blood?’ you ask. You are sure that that is not the way to go about asking someone’s blood colour, but you ask it anyway. You just want to be sure he won’t run back and tell whoever he’s with that he saw you.

‘Uh, no, I’m uh, a low blood.’ He said, breaking his fleeting eye contact with you and looking away completely.

‘You supposed to be out here?’ asked Sollux, monotonously and blunt.

‘I, uh,’ he seemed to consider himself for a moment. ‘No.’

‘Good. Then you won’t tell anyone we were here either. Let’s go.’

‘Sollux, wait!’ you say as he turns away. ‘What exactly is you blood colour?’ you ask Tavros.

‘I’m, uh, brown-blood.’

‘I see. Well you’re a high-blood to us Tavros! Have you run away?’

‘Y-yes.’ He says, looking up at you sadly.

‘Well, we’re all runaways here, so we should stick together, don’t you think?’ you ask as you hold out your hand to him. He blinks at you for a moment, before registering what you’d said as an invitation to join you.

He takes your hand and you pull him up.

‘I, uh, thank you.’

Chapter 30: TAVROS: Be a little more than slightly confused.

Chapter Text

You are still confused as to what exactly is happening, even though it’s been explained to you quite a few times now.

The nice girl called Aradia had helped you up and invited you to join her group to go… wherever it is they’re going.

They told you they had escaped from slavery, the two rust-bloods, Aradia and Karkat, from the iron mines out in the desert, and the mustard blood from a factory that builds engines and machines. They told you they had used the eclipse as cover and ran for it. When you told them you had escaped when the sun went dark (which they explained to you was the eclipse, they seemed surprised. Except the mustard blood. He just shrugged it off and said he expects there will be more runaways who used the same cover.

They had escaped to find a better life, and you had only bothered trying to escape because of your lack of food. When you explained this, Tinkerbull had crawled out from under your shirt back and began fluttering around your head. They had all seemed fascinated by the fact that someone of your blood colour still had your Lusus with you.

You had explained to them that you had run away and just headed in whatever direction seemed like a good escape route.

But it turns out; they are heading the way you came. Now that you’ve joined them, you’ll have to back-track.

And now you share stories and sparingly eat the food they have, (yours didn’t last long at all) as you walk slowly through the forest. The ground is rough and covered in tree roots and moss, which are not the easiest things to walk on, but the trees were green and the air was cool, which you suppose would be a pleasant change for the others who had just come from the desert.

You had found a stream in the shade and had stopped by to rest there for the day. You had start a little fire for you all to sit around, as it’s a lot colder in these forests and for the others, they’d need to try to keep warm as opposed to trying to keep cool.

As the sun begins to rise, you all lie down in the shade and go to sleep. Except Sollux, who had decided it best to keep someone up to keep watch. He’s going to switch with Aradia at some point in the night. You all sleep well, Except Karkat, the really grumpy one, who seems to have had some sort of bad dream during the day.

By the evening, you have all gathered your few possessions and begun to move on.

You have no idea where you are headed, and you’re not too sure the others know either, but at least travelling with them is a heck of a lot safer than just aimlessly running around with only Tinkerbull.

Chapter 31: KARKAT: Feel mildly annoyed, though in a still tolerable mood. Fuck that you are pissed off and you're not gonna deal with anyone's shit right now.

Chapter Text

Once again, your name is Karkat Vantas and you are not fucking happy.

Days, nearly a week before the day you made your escape, you were having nightmares about the gap in the fence, and getting tangled and mauled in it its loose wires which seemed to stretch out towards you.

Now that it’s been nearly a week since you got out, you are still having these dreams.

Not about the fence, about the wires.

The first day after you escaped, you dreamt you’d gotten through the hole and after what seemed like miles of running; you’d look around to find the wire had caught on your clothing and was curling around your limbs. You’d kept running, only to find when the wires were pulled to their limit, they stuck fast, pulling you back across the ground.

Each day after that, you’d dreamt something terrifying that was related to something about the wire. Not every day you woke up screaming, but around fifty precent of the time you did.

Your most recent dream was that you’d all been captured somehow, by someone important, as if you were each worth something. You found yourself in a small cell, or cage, with whomever it was who had captured you all, grinning down at you. Somehow, you’d ended up tied up by ropes or wires to the extent you couldn’t move. Eventually, you’d found the ropes had been pulled up to your neck to form a noose. The ends of the ropes had been tossed over the top bars of the cell-cage, and pulled down until you’d been hung. Just before you woke up, presumably before you’d died, you saw Aradia in the dark corners of the room, screaming and crying out to you, without making a single sound.
You had always had terrible dreams, ever since you were a wriggler. Most of them were memories, Traumatic experiences that you got to re-live. Though the ones that weren’t, you’d never understood. Dreams are supposed to be a collection of thoughts, things that you conjure up yourself, yet, you’d always found these dreams came from completely out of the blue, being horribly violent and disgusting beyond anything you’d consciously witnessed or thought of. You guess that maybe you’ve just got a really sick sub-conscious mind.

The three- wait, four of you are just walking along. That’s all you’ve done since you got free. You are kind of sick of just walking to nowhere in particular, with no goal you can reach and nothing for you to achieve. You do suppose that this beats working in the mines though. Wait, there’s no supposing about that, this definitely beats mining any day.

Though it would be nice if you knew where you were gonna end up, and how things would be when you got there.

You’ve all kinda slowed down a bit and are beginning to settle in for a rest when Sollux calls you out.

‘Hey, KK, come look at this.’

Without much hesitation, as you were probably only going to sit on your ass for an hour or so anyway, you walk over to Sollux who has his arm pushed into a rather thick looking branch of leaves.

‘What is it’ you say bluntly, barely even trying to make it sound like a question.

‘We’re nearly out of food, right?’ he asks.

‘Yeah?’ he motions for you to move closer. As you approach, he pushes some of the leaves away with his arm, giving you a clear view of what lay beyond.

Just down a small but steep hill, lies a clearing. Little houses and buildings littered the open space, smoke pouring from their chimneys, trolls strolling around casually while others were hard at work.

Sollux looks to you.

‘Well I think we just hit the jackpot.’

Chapter 32: KARKAT: That was the plan.

Chapter Text

Sneak in, swipe some supplies, get out before you’re caught.
Simple.
Easy.
No one gets hurt.

That was the plan, anyway.

-

‘So, we sneak down while there’s no one around, hide somewhere until someone leaves one of the houses, then run in, go through the cupboards, and get out. Is that right?’ asks Aradia, wanting to check one last time.

‘Don’t take anything you don’t need.’ Adds Sollux.

‘Yeah okay, let’s go’ you say, wanting to move the plans along.

‘Uhh, what happens if we get caught?’ asks Tavros nervously.

‘Just get the fuck out of there. If it causes a scene, we’ll know about it.’ Says Sollux, failing to be reassuring at all.

‘Okay, let’s go ’ you say again, more impatiently this time, wanting everyone to just hurry up.

You walk towards the village impatiently, hiding behind the cover of the woods, the others following close. When the villagers have moved mostly out of sight, Sollux mutters a quiet “now” and you all slip down the bank and run the short distance to the nearest hive. As the street eventually clears, each of you run off to hide out near a hive each. Slowly, one by one, you each look through the windows and press you ears against the doors to check if anyone is home, then Sollux runs into his hive, followed by Aradia running into her own.

You can hear footsteps from inside the hive you are outside of, so you decide to wait. A troll walks by and you have to bury yourself in a bush, hoping that if you get caught, the hive’s inhabitant won’t hold a grudge against you for ruining their flowers. As a young female troll comes bursting out of the hive, you nearly jump out of your own skin. The door swings shut behind her and you leap up to see if its locked.

It isn’t.

What a trusting troll. Too bad they’re getting robbed.

You run up to the kitchen, instantly thinking about how huge this hive is. You get to the cupboards and just grab anything that looks edible and shove it into your little cloth bag that you made out of your old cloak. Once you’re done, you go to head straight out only to turn and see a tall olive blooded male troll had just walked in behind you.

The girl hadn’t been trusting at all. Somebody else had been here the whole time.

And now, here you are, a blade at your neck, and yelling in your ears, calling out to the other villagers.

Well, fuck.

Chapter 33: KARKAT: Get the fuck out.

Chapter Text

Okay shit you have to run.

All it took to distract the guy holding you at knife-point was a loud gasp as you stared into the air behind him.

It earned you a good cut under the jaw though.

You dashed out of the house, to find a bunch of trolls headed your way to see what all the fuss was about, coming from the direction you had all entered the village, leaving you without your escape route.

You turn and run in the other direction, to see Sollux creeping out of a hive and closing the door quietly.

You grab him by the shoulder as you pass and keep moving.

‘KK, what the fuck?’

‘We gotta get the FUCK out of here NOW!’ you shout, still trying to navigate your way through the mess of hives.

He pulls you into a small gap between two hives and holds a hand over your mouth as a few trolls run past.

‘Not leaving without AA.’ He said, quietly, though sternly, and you could tell just from his voice that nothing would change his mind.

‘Sollux, we’re gonna fucking die!’ you hiss at him. Next thing you know he’s grabbed you by the shirt and got you pinned against the wall.

‘Not. Leaving. Without AA.’ He says, sounding a hell of a lot more final than before.

‘Agh- fine. We get Aradia, and we get out.’

‘AA won’t leave without TV.’

‘What?!’

‘Tavros’ he says, as though the word won’t roll off his tongue right.

‘But-’

‘She won’t, KK!’

‘Fine. We get them, and then we run.’ On saying that, you ducked your head around the corner, only to pull it back quickly as another olive-blood passes. As soon as they’re gone, you stick your head out again. You wave Sollux over and you both quickly duck out of the gap and jog quietly through the street, which is now deserted, as the villagers all seem to have joined in on the chase that you had escaped from. Up ahead you see a door begin to open and slide to a halt, Sollux crashes into your back, nearly knocking you over.

The door seems to edge its way open, bit by bit, almost cautiously. You are both silently scrambling to turn and duck for cover when you notice a head pop out of the other side of the door, close to the ground. A head with, from what you can see, long curly hair and thick curled horns.

‘AA.’ Sollux hissed in your ear. You both get your act together and scramble towards her. As you approach, she turns her head towards you quickly, hearing your footsteps, fearing being caught, though her expression relaxes once she sees it’s you two. She gets up and takes a few long steps towards you.

‘Where’s Tavros?’ she asks in a hushed tone.

‘We don’t know.’ Says Sollux. Aradia turns and begins to look around as she walks up the street. She puts her hands up to her face, cupping her mouth and she begins to hiss out his name.

All is quiet for a moment before you hear something crash into the wooden door of one of the hives. You all freeze and turn to face the noise. You hear a quiet “ow” just before the door opens to Tavros rubbing his forehead.

‘Tavros!’ Aradia calls quietly. He looks up and begins to run over toward you all. As he is approaching, you hear the swoosh of something moving quickly through the air just before you feel a slight stab of pain at the side of your neck. Instantly, Sollux is at your side and you feel a quick tug at the skin on your neck before you’ve even registered what’s happened. This all happens in a matter of seconds.

Suddenly, you are dragged to the shadows by the nearest hive and Sollux has shoved you to the ground and is kneeling next to you, Aradia and Tavros standing nervously behind him.

‘Sollux what the fuck-’

‘Shut up, KK!’ he silences you as he appears to be inspecting the side of your neck. ‘We have to go.’ He says, almost calmly. He helps you up for whatever reason and holds onto you as you all creep back into the shadows on the street and hurriedly begin to make your way out of the village. You only just notice you can hear yelling as trolls chase you from far behind. You finally reach the edge and climb up the ledge and back into the forest, but you don’t stop there, much to your surprise. It seemed reasonable to stop to you, but the others keep running.

You all keep running for a while, you aren’t sure how long.

When you finally stop, its after you’re almost being dragged by Sollux. You’re all panting and exhausted.

‘KK, sit down.’ Sollux says sternly. You do what he says without question and you aren’t entirely sure why. Sollux talks to Aradia, hushed and frantic, while Tavros stands by, looking insanely worried, yet staying quiet. Sollux kneels down in front of you. He asks you to be still while he puts a hand to the right side of your neck and inspects it closely.

‘Getting a bit fucking intimate here, aren’t we Sollux?’ you ask sarcastically, surprised by how weak your voice sounds.

‘Shut the fuck up KK.’

‘What the fuck is even going on, anyway?’

‘Just shut up and stay still.’ He says sternly as he asks Aradia to pass him something. You pay no mind to what it is.

‘Your hands are fucking cold and I feel dizzy. Just tell me- WHAT THE FUCK-’ you yell as you feel a sharp cutting pain at the part of your neck Sollux is looking at. Your hand flies to the side of your neck and is quickly pulled back by Sollux, so you whip your other hand to it which is pulled away by Sollux’s other hand as soon as he drops the small knife he’s holding- fuck, since when was he holding a knife oh god what the fuck is happening.

‘Let it bleed.’ Says Sollux, almost emotionlessly, almost soothingly.

‘What the fuck you cut my neck I’m gonna bleed out-’ you babble frantically.

‘Shush. We won’t let it bleed that much, it’s not on the artery. We’ll bandage it up soon, just clam down or your heart-rate will go up too far and pump out too much blood.’

‘What-’

‘Karkat,’ says Aradia quietly as she kneels down beside Sollux. She holds out her hand, palm up, and inside her palm was a tiny pin sort of thing, flagged with a few tiny orange coloured feathers.

‘We were being watched by a troll hiding on top of one of the hives.’

‘So?’ we’re out of there now!’ you say, pointing out the obvious, not making the connection Aradia was trying to get you to make.

‘That troll’s weapon must have been dart-kind Karkat.’

‘Okay’ you say, not really sure how you should respond.

‘Karkat, Sollux thinks it’s been dipped in poison.’

Oh fuck.

Oh and you also just realize now.

Sollux can see your blood.

His hands are covered in your mutant blood.

He knows about your blood colour.

Chapter 34

Chapter Text

‘So… A mutant blood huh?’ you ask Aradia as she sits on a rock opposite you.

‘Yeah.’ Is all she responds with.

‘…did you know?’

‘Of course I knew! Do you know how many times I’ve had to bandage up his wounds in the past three sweeps?’

‘Oh.’ I all you can say as you look over at the subject in matter.

Karkat lies asleep a few metres away from the two of you. He’s been out for about ten minutes now and he’s already sleeping like the dead. You make sure to go check on him every few minutes or so. You have no idea what the dart had been dipped in, but you’re certain it’s nothing good. After he got over the initial shock of being poisoned, which came after getting over the shock of bleeding in front of you, he’d claimed to feel dizzy and tired, which could be blamed on the blood-loss and the over-exertion, and you’re hoping that those two factors are the cause behind these symptoms.

The cut on his neck had bled freely for a few minutes before you had torn up the cloth bag you’d escaped with and used it to bandage his neck. You are hoping most or even all of the toxins and affected blood had bled out of him. It’s not likely but you can still hope.

The issue of the blood colour had been quite a problem. He’d kicked up quite a panicked fuss and wouldn’t shut up or stop trying to run away until Aradia had grabbed his hands and held the down so he was forced into a sitting position until he’d calmed down.

You hear a groan and the sound of a body rolling over and you and Aradia both look quickly towards Karkat to see he still hasn’t moved. The source of the noise had come from Tavros, who is sleeping not far from Karkat, who had tried to roll on his side but his horns had prevented that action.

‘I’m so worried about them.’ Says Aradia quietly with a sigh.

‘What, those two?’

‘Yeah, Karkat with what’s happened to him, Tavros with whatever he’s running away from, and you too!’ she said quietly, with a sad expression which turned even sadder as she looked to you.

‘Me?’ you ask.

‘Yes you! You might be able to lie to the others, but you haven’t fooled me! I know you are hiding something, and I know you don’t want to tell me what it is, but I’m worried about you Sollux!’ she says, leaning forward, her voice matching the pleading expression she’s giving you.

You can do nothing but look back at her with a melancholy face.

She leans closer and places her hands over yours which are together on your lap. Looking up at you she speaks again gently, though with concern.

‘Sollux, please just know that you can trust me! And that I am here for you! If something is troubling you, anything at all, you can come to me about it! I won’t tell anyone anything you’d like me to keep secret, and I’ll listen to what you have to say and I can help you. I know you don’t want to talk to me about these things, but just know that I’m here for when you do!’ her face is filled with worry and concern as she puts a hand to your cheek. You can’t help but lean into it and place you own hand upon it.
You look back at her sadly saying nothing. She hasn’t taken her eyes off yours since she first mentioned you just now. You wonder if she’s at all freaked out by your eyes, and just bearing through staring at them for your sake. None of the other psionics back at the compound had eyes like you and you often got ridiculed and shot weird looks as you passed others by.

Her eyes though, never waver from your own.

Reluctantly, you take her hand and slowly pull it from her face, as well as pulling your other hand from under hers, still on your lap, and stand.

‘I should go check on KK. You should get some sleep, AA.’ You say as you look down at her with a gentle smile.

‘…all right, I guess. Good morning Sollux.’

You watch as she stands and walks barely a metre before lying down and closing her eyes.

You watch her for a moment before walking over to Karkat. You kneel behind him, still lying on his side and watch him for a few moments. Though he looks pretty dead, after a moment, you see his side move slowly to the pace of his breath.

You place a hand to his forehead, his temperature feels normal, so you decide it’s safe to assume he’s okay. For now, at least.

You watch him for another few moments, before walking back over to the two rocks where you and Aradia had sat. You look over to Aradia herself, to see her breathing appears to have already slowed. She must have been exhausted.

You walk over to her quietly, and kneel down beside her.

You place a hand to the side of her head, and look at her peaceful, sleeping face for a moment, before bending down and placing a kiss on the top of her head.

‘Thank you.’ You whisper.

You almost swear you can see her smile.

Chapter 35: ARADIA: Proceed to try to keep your friends safe.

Chapter Text

It’s been three nights since you and Sollux had that talk.

You’d pretended to fall asleep almost instantly so he’d stop worrying and just go to sleep as well.

You also know that he’d come over and kissed you on the head and thanked you. You hadn’t been expecting it, but it had made you smile anyway.

You’ve been walking along, trying to find another town or village, (you have a better plan this time,) in search of help for Karkat.

You all had thought he was going to be okay, but two nights ago he’d claimed to feel dizzy again.

Not long after that, he’d brought up the contents of his stomach twice within the hour.

None of you had shared the same symptoms, so it wasn’t a contagious illness, nor what you had been eating that had caused this.

You had all decided that it had been at the dart’s fault.

Karkat has been weary and tired all night, he keeps falling behind and you have to keep stopping to wait for him. He won’t eat anything, he thinks it’ll be a waste of food if he’s only going to throw it back up again. When you stop to rest for the day, you’ll try and convince him to eat again, even if it is only a little.

Out of the village raid, Tavros had been the only one to successfully return with anything at all. He’d brought back quite a bit, actually.

A few loaves of bread, a large container full of various dried berries, a small bag of fresh vegetables, two cakes, and much to all of your surprise and joy, a large chunk of some sort of meat.

As the meat would have gone bad first, you had built a fire and roasted it the night after the raid.

It’d been far too long since any of you had had a good dose of protein and it had been absolutely delicious.

The cakes, you had eaten the next night, out of fear that it would spoil.

The night afterwards, you had started another fire and roasted some vegetables over it and eaten them with some bread. Tavros had also retrieved a large kitchen knife for you so you could cut things, rather than just tearing off chunks as you always had.

You’d been eating the same thing for the last few nights, snacking on berries every now and then also.

You felt as though you’d all been eating like kings. Or the empress herself.

Except Karkat. Since his stomach had near given up trying to digest things, he’d stopped eating almost all together.

You were worried about him, and that’s why you had to reach help fast.

-

You had found a village earlier that night.

You had all entered and wandered around for a bit. The olive blooded villagers didn’t seem to mind at all. You asked one where you could find medical help, and he’d gladly pointed you in the direction of their village doctor. As it was only an olive blood village, you doubted he’d be much of a doctor, but you needed his help.

Once you’d arrived, you’d told him your problem. He said he might be able to help.

He then turned you all away and asked you all to leave the village when you’d refused to share your blood colour and show your symbols.

You barely even remember what your symbol looks like or you would have shown him.

You know for a fact that if you were a bunch of low-bloods and a mutant, he would have done worse than turn you away.

You’d all either be dead or on the run.

Well, more “on the run” than you already are.

You’re now walking along, the same direction as before, in hopes of finding somewhere else.

Little do you know you’re all heading in the direction you really shouldn’t be.

-

You pass through village after village, even a big town at some point. You all try to keep a low profile.

You fled for what could have been your lives when you wandered into a village that was being visited by some blue bloods.

You’d never seen a blue blood in your life, that you could remember, and they were absolutely terrifying.

They stood tall, and looked down upon everyone, very aware of the fact that the people around them were below them. They were at least ten sweeps old, and looked older than
any troll you’d ever seen in your life.

Wait, you think you do remember meeting a blue blooded troll before.

It was a long, long time ago though.

It was back in the days where it had been safe for you to run in and out of the mining compound through the hole in the fence almost as often as you pleased. Back in the days before they’d received a grant from the empress with enough money to raise the security levels up a lot.

You remember that some young high-bloods had been brought to visit the compound, so that they could see where the low-bloods belong or something and what they could do when they grew up, like owning companies and factories and such.

You had just clambered out through the fence to look for the old guard house (there used to be a guard house on the other side of the fence too) to find some bandages for Karkat.

One of the blue bloods must have wandered off from his Lusus or whoever had taken him and had found you as you climbed though the fence.

You remember he’d tried to tell you to go back, but you refused to listen. In the end, he’d tagged along with your little escapade.

That’s all you remember though.

These blue bloods, however, wouldn’t hesitate to cull you on sight just for not wearing your symbols.

They appear to be inspecting and taking the produce of the village. Foods and materials the villagers had produced. You shrank back in your hiding place as you saw a troll get struck down for not producing enough cloth.

You guess those troll are as much as slaves as you are.

Just with slightly more freedom.

And they probably get paid too.

Now you sit on the outskirts of a small town waiting Sollux’s return.

You sit under a tree as you see the light of the sun just popping up in the distance.

A figure approaches you from the town. As it closes the distance slowly, you can see that it is Sollux.

As he got to being only a few metres away, he started talking to you.

‘They’ve got a pretty good doctor, but he’d need to show his blood colour and symbol, and they’re pretty pricey for just an inspection. An actual treatment would cost more than we’re all worth and last time I checked, not a single one of us has a penny to our name.’

‘Oh, well, we’ll have to try somewhere else.’ You say with a sigh. Sollux comes and sits down quite close right beside you. Karkat is almost asleep, leaned up against a tree, mumbling something incoherently. Tavros is off about ten metres away, playing with a little bird that flew down to him.

‘We’ll have to move soon, it’s almost daylight.’ You say to Sollux.

‘Yeah. We should probably get moving now if we’re gonna find shelter.’ He says.

‘No need. Tavros fixed up a little tent over a bush, so we’re fine for at least another ten minutes.’

‘Oh. Good.’

Lately there hasn’t been much to talk about between the two of you, but the silence that sits in is comfortable.

Within a few minutes you find yourself leaning against him, your head rested on his shoulder. It takes less than a minute for him to rest his head on top of yours.

You sit like that for a while before you hear a small voice behind you.

‘Uh, I’m really sorry to uh, interrupt, but I really think we should get under cover now.’

You both turn quickly to see Tavros standing a few feet behind you, looking away and nervously playing with his hands.

‘What, no you’re no interrupting anything-’

‘No nothing’s happening we just-’

You both reply hurriedly.

He looks back at you, sort of questioningly, though still nervously.

‘Well I, uh, still think we should get moving.’ He says.

‘Yes, um, Sollux, could you give me a hand with Karkat?’ you ask, not sure if you feel embarrassed or not, but the blood is rushing to your cheeks anyway.

Tavros wanders off back to his makeshift tent and you and Sollux approach a sleeping Karkat. You both grab him by the arms and start to pull him up. Poor thing. He’s so exhausted.

‘He may look it but he’s not stupid you know.’ Karkat mumbles quietly. It startles both you and Sollux as you both thought he was still asleep.

‘What the fuck are you talking about KK?’ asked Sollux, almost nonchalantly.

‘Anybody can see it, dumbfuck.’ He mumbles back.

‘Karkat, what are you talking about?’ you ask as you begin walking him over to the tent.

‘You two. You’re fucking redder than my hideous mutant blood.’

You both stop.

Sure, you were slightly aware of it, but no one had ever acknowledged it out loud before.

You and Sollux had always had an almost sort of a thing going on, but neither of you had dared bring it up, nor had anyone else seemed to notice.

You begin walking Karkat again.

‘You do realise that your silence is just confirming what I said, right?’ he mumbles.

‘…just shut the fuck up KK.’ Sollux says gently and tiredly.

You aren’t entirely sure how he feels on the matter, or how he feels at all, but you know that both of you would have been more appreciative if Karkat had kept quiet on the matter. And he would have, if he wasn’t on the brink of slipping into deliriousness again.

You get under the cover and lay Karkat down next to Tavros.

You and Sollux lie next to each other. Sollux next to Karkat, and you against the side of the rags and cloth that Tavros had used to construct the tent.

Despite it being daylight, it has gotten quite cold and you have been lying awake for almost half an hour now. You’re not tired one bit and you want to move closer to Sollux to keep warm, but you worry about getting into another situation like earlier for some reason, and you don’t think Sollux would appreciate it much.

You fall asleep, your skin cold to the touch.

You wake up a few hours later, feeling much warmer. You gather up your senses for a few moments and realize Sollux is practically snuggled up against you, his head curled over yours. It takes a little while longer for you to wake up enough to realise that his arm is over your side and curled around your back. You go to lean in closer and snuggle up to his chest when you realise you are sleeping on your horn.

Suddenly, you’re not quite as comfortable.

You try to roll your head forward to move off it, but you only get your face pressed into the ground.

In the end, you slowly roll onto your back, so you’re still under Sollux’s arm and can move closer.

Sure your horn is against his chest, but so is your face and he feels so warm.

You just want to sleep like this forever.

-

Sollux had woken up before you and untangled himself from you and was lying on his side with his back to you. It mustn’t have been long ago, because you can still feel his warmth. In fact, it was probably why you had woken up in the first place.

You lie still for a few minutes, just enjoying the comfort of not moving.

You lie there for a few moments more, before rolling back onto your side and slowly placing a hand to his back. He mustn’t have heard you roll over because he flinches slightly at your touch.

‘Sollux?’ you say so quietly it’s almost a whisper. ‘Is it night yet?’

After a few seconds he responds with ‘Almost.’

You lie there for another half an hour at least before Tavros begins to stir. After a while he sits up and takes a peek under the cloth sheet.

‘You guys awake?’ he asks.

‘Yeah.’ says Sollux.

‘Well, it’s uh, dark out. We could probably start getting ready to move now, if uh, you guys want to.’

‘Sounds like a good idea.’ You say. ‘Let’s get something to eat.’

You sit up, still sleepy and begin rummaging through the bag you keep the food in.

‘We’re gonna need more food in a few days, this bread won’t last much longer and neither will the vegetables. The berries will last quite a while though.’

‘Yeah, I’ll get some more soon.’ mumbles Sollux, showing no intention of moving any time soon.

You get out the knife and messily slice a thick piece of bread off for Tavros and another for yourself. You decide to wait for Sollux to begin moving before you slice off some for him.

You all eat and begin to gather everything together. Karkat has yet to stir.

‘KK.’ Says Sollux as he gently shakes his shoulder. ‘KK, come on, wake up.’

Karkat doesn’t even move in response.

‘Karkat, time to wake up.’ You chime in.

‘KK, come on.’ Sollux shakes his shoulder a little more. ‘KK.’ His voice slowly shows more concern.

‘Is he uh, breathing?’ Tavros nervously asks. You instantly look at him. Lying on his side, you should be able to clearly see his fragile frame moving with his breaths.
You can’t.

Sollux leans over him quickly, his ear to his chest and his hand to his face.

‘KK, come on, wake up!’ Sollux calls, shaking him almost violently.

Everyone is quiet and still for a few moments.

It feels like forever.

Suddenly, Karkat takes a quick, shaky breath through his nose and blinks himself awake.

You slump down with a deep sigh of relief.

‘Come on KK, time to wake up.’

Slowly and groggily, Karkat rolls onto his back and does his best to sleepily death glare Sollux, little does he know he was just dancing on the brink of death.

‘Here.’ You say as you hand him a slice of bread.

‘Mmmrgh. Don’t want.’ He said as he rubbed his eyes.

‘Eat it.’ You say.

He mumbles out a sound that seems close enough to a “no”.

‘Eat it.’ you have tried not to be forceful towards him as of late, but he needs to eat. And apparently, you were pretty intimidating when you wanted to be. He stares at you for a moment before beginning to nibble at his bread.

You stand up at pull the sheets off of the bush they’re resting on in one swift movement.

You apparently pull it over Karkat’s head because he lets out a hiss.

Within the hour you’ve all packed up and started moving.

You’re all walking along when you hear something slip to the ground behind you.

You turn to see Karkat had fallen in a heap on the ground.

You quickly run to his side and roll him onto his back. He appears to have slipped out of consciousness, and his face was covered in beads of sweat, his breathing deep and heavy.

‘Sollux, help me!’ you call desperately. He rushes over to you and tries to help you lift him.

‘We have to get him to help, now!’ he says.

‘Uh, maybe I can help?’ say Tavros, terrified, but nervously.

‘No TV, we got it.’

‘No, I uh, I think I can help, just let me, uh, try.’

Tavros approached and leaned over with his back to the the of you.

‘Put him on my back.’

Reluctantly, you and Sollux lifted Karkat off the ground and hoist him onto Tavros’ back.

Much to both of your surprise, Tavros began walking, without any sort of problem.

‘Well then.’ says Sollux.

‘I uh, did a lot of lifting and stuff back where I used to live.’ Tavros explains.

‘Oh okay. Well we need to get help somewhere fast.’ Says Sollux as he rushes ahead.

You walk on for another few hours, and Tavros is only just beginning to show signs of strain. Despite his scrawny figure, he must be quite strong.

You hear a soft moan coming from Karkat as he stirs back into consciousness.

‘What the fuck…?’ he mumbles.

‘You passed out.’ You tell him.

‘Oh. I feel fine now though so… can I walk?’

‘I uh, I think you should uh, just rest a little more first.’

Karkat proceeded to grumble incoherently for the next hour.

You’d been walking up a wide gravel path up a hillside and he is insisting he be let down. You all decide it’s okay to let him.

The trees around you are changing to an odd colour as you move along.

You realize you are entering a village or town as you are beginning to see hives scattered around the area as you move into deeper forest.

As you all proceed, you begin to hear laughing, giggling. It appears a young troll is playing somewhere.

You all walk through and the laughing grows louder.

Suddenly the laughing stops as you step into a huge clearing in amongst the huge trees.

You look out in front of you and you see the source of the laughter.

Instantly fear washes over you.

You can almost feel the others freeze up behind you.

Seeing this troll before you made you feel as though you’d all been playing one big game.

And you’d just lost.

You feel as if you’d just been checkmated.

You’d danced along danger before, with similar consequences as now, but escaped, unharmed.

For the troll standing before you is one you dare not harm, out of fear of the consequence, but one that could bring you down with a single word.

You barely notice the shade of the symbol upon this troll’s shirt, but you can see that it is blue, some bright shade of blue that felt like a blow to the gut.

You can’t escape now, you’ve been caught. If you so much as turn around, this troll could call out to others and you’d be surrounded. You can’t attack, for a troll of your caste to cause harm to a blue blood is suicide.

Just like wandering into blue blood territory without wearing your colour or symbol, or walking into blue blood territory with your blood caste at all.

The blue bloods you’d encountered before had never seen you, so you’d been able to escape unharmed.

You’re all going to die very shortly.

The troll looks like it’s about to say something. The next words it speaks will decide your fate.

After a few moments that feel like a million sweeps, the troll opens its mouth and says-

-

Elsewhere;

Your name is Nepeta Leijon and you are putting up a new addition on your colourful shipping wall.

END DYSTOPIASTUCK PART ONE.

Chapter 36: Your name is Nepeta Leijon

Chapter Text

Some of us struggle, and some of us go free
Some of us despair, and some are happy as can be
Our colours range from the grass to the sky
Right in between what is lost and what is high
So why must we stay, and do as we're told?
why can we not go and live on our own?

Let's join hands and run away

-

Your name is NEPETA LEIJON and you are putting up a NEW ADDITION on your colourful SHIPPING WALL.

You DON’T KNOW all that many people to SHIP, but you make do with who you have.

You’ve got some trolls from the nearby VILLAGE, and a SMALL HANDFUL of FRIENDS FROM BEFORE.

Before you were FORCED TO START WORKING, that is.

These days, you are lucky to have some FREE TIME to update your SHIPS, you’re also lucky to have any ships to UPDATE since you’ve pretty much EXHAUSTED ALL THE POSSIBILITIES.

You finish painting in the BLOOD OF YOUR ENEMIES- or rather the BLOOD OF YOUR MOST RECENT CATCH, and go curl up with your LUSUS on your bed of OLD ANIMAL SKINS.

Whoa whoa whoa, hold up, you have your Lusus still?

Yes, indeed you do, she is RIGHT HERE and you are CURLED UP AGAINST HER.

Ok, so you are another troll who is secretly keeping their Lusus for longer than they’re supposed to-

No no no no, you have it all wrong.

You may be an OLIVE BLOOD; however you are not so low on the HEMOSPECTRUM that you have to give up your Lusus at the age of FIVE.

Or THREE, like some of the REALLY LOW BLOODED trolls.

You have another THREE PERIGEES before your Lusus is sent away.

You are NOT LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS for a number of reasons.

First of all, you LOVE your Lusus a lot, and you will absolutely HATE to see her go. That is the biggest reason.

SECONDLY, your job.

At the end of each night, you must bring in a CERTAIN AMOUNT OF YOUR CATCH each night for the BLUE BLOODS who come to collect it.

You see, the BLUE BLOODS are incredibly DEMANDING.

Your catch feeds them, as well as being STORED and PRESEVERED and sent all across the EMPIRE.

However, though you pride yourself on being a HUNTRESS, you alone COULD NOT POSSIBLY CATCH THAT MUCH FOOD.

This is where your LUSUS comes in. she helps you by catching the VAST MAJORITY OF ALL YOUR PREY.

When they send her away, you will be CULLED for not being able to keep up all the WORK.

You snuggle up to your Lusus a bit more and into her long, soft white fur and try not to worry yourself too much.

You’ll never sleep if you get TOO WORKED UP.

So you try to clear your MIND with thoughts of your LUSUS and your few OLD FRIENDS and of course, the one place where you could all be free.

You fall asleep and dream of the UTOPIA.

Chapter 37: Your name is Kanaya Maryam

Chapter Text

You quickly run through the UNDERGROUND TUNNELS as you hurriedly try to complete your task. You are running VERY LATE and you-

Hold up a moment, you are far too busy for any of this now, let’s talk to you a little later.

-

You saunter into your room, absolutely EXHAUSTED.

Your night has been INCREDIBLY BUSY, though it’s not unlike pretty much EVERY OTHER NIGHT.

You spend each and every night TENDING TO THE YOUNG OF YOUR SPECIES and assisting HOWEVER YOU CAN down here in the BREEDING CAVERNS.

You live in almost COMPLETE ISOLATION with only one other JADE BLOOD down here with you, though she DIRECTLY ATTENDS TO THE MOTHER GRUB and you rarely see her.

In all your SIX SWEEPS you’ve met her a grand total of FOUR TIMES.

Despite how BUSY YOU ARE, there isn’t an awful lot that needs to be DONE.

You are simply kept on your toes in PREPARATION OF TAKING OVER THE OTHER JADE BLOODS RESPONIBILITIES when it is time.

You really wish that you weren’t born into this BLOOD CASTE so that you didn’t have to do all this.

When the other jade blood DIES, you will live in TOTAL ISOLATION for at least TWENTY SWEEPS before the next jade blood comes around. In your life time, you will probably never
get the chance to fill a single QUADRANT.

Though every perigee you receive an NEW SHIPMENT OF BOOKS so that at least keeps you happy.

You also like to chat with some of your friends in HIGHER PLACES on your HUSKTOP, but don’t get to often as you are busy, and they are busy, or they’re just off having fun.

You don’t ever recall LEAVING THE CAVERNS and you often wonder what it would be like to wander around in the sun.

Even though that’s stupid, because, you know, sunlight burns.

And you aren’t a fancy RAINBOW DRINKER like in some of your novels.

Though sometimes, you like to pretend you are.

You quickly prepare some food and eat it while you read, careful not to spill it on your book or the JADE MOTHER ROBES you made yourself.

Though you can get anything you want shipped in for you, you get very lonely. You don’t even get to see the troll who delivers your things because it’s all just dropped into the tunnels in a crate.

You hear a ding coming from the Trollian app on your husktop so you put your things down and quickly go to check it, fighting off a yawn.

You shan’t be talking for long, but you shall check it nonetheless.

Ah! A new message from arachnidsGrip! It’s been a while since you’ve heard from your flush-crush-I mean what.

You answer the message and listen to her babble on about the fictional land she loves so much.

The Utopia.

Chapter 38: Your name is Terezi Pyrope

Chapter Text

You let out a quick CACKLE as you watch yet another of your little FLUFFY SCALEMATES swinging on the end of a long NOOSE. Sergeant Pinesnuffle was tried for MURDER and proven GUILTY by none other than yourself, the very best LEGISLACERATOR around.

Anyway, MAKE BELIEVE OVER you guess.

Time to get something to eat.

You run through your TREE TOP HIVE to your refrigerator, only to grab a small array of various COLOURED and FRUITY flavoured substances.

You run back to your RESPITEBLOCK and plonk down on your desk chair, dropping something in your arms as you do.

You awkwardly lean over your desk and drop the snacks on top of it, some of them possibly landing on your keyboard, which would probably be why you apparently sent your friend Vriska a message over Trollian saying; “buisgIU92Q78bdkjbKJBGkbk”. Heh heh, that will confuse her at least.

You lean down to pick up the item you had dropped, which happened to be a little tub of some kind of yogurt. After quickly inspecting it, you decide it is undamaged and you shall not have to clean it up off the floor, and it is strawberry flavoured.

Excellent.

You tear open the lid before remembering you didn’t bring a spoon with you. You quickly decide that you cannot be bothered going all the way back to get one, so you eat it all with your tongue.

It proves difficult work, but you manage.

From what you can tell, your Trollian window appears to be flashing brightly at you. A quick sniff allows you to determine that you have received a new message from arachnidsGrip, your friend, Vriska.

-- gallowsCalibrator [GC] is back online! --

GC: buisgIU92Q78bdkjbKJBGkbk

AG: the fuck????????

GC: H3H3H3H3H3H3 >;]

AG: What

GC: N3V3R M1ND, VR1SK4.

AG: ooooooookay then.

AG: Ugh I’m so 8ored!!!!!!!!

GC: HOW TH3 H3LL 4R3 YOU BOR3D? >:?

GC: DON’T YOU H4V3 STUDY1NG TO DO?

AG: Just 8ecause I have 8een told to study, doesn’t mean I am actually going to do it.

GC: >:[

GC: YOU’R3 GO1NG TO R3GR3T 4LL YOUR SL4CK1NG OFF YOU KNOW.

AG: No, I’m pretty sure I’m not.

AG: I don’t actually give a shit a8out advanced science in the study of troll 8ullshit.

GC: YOU SHOULD.

GC: TROLL BULLSH1T 1S 4 V3RY 1NT3R3ST1NG SUBJ3CT, YOU KNOW! > :]

GC: 1, H4V3 F1N1SH3D 4LL OF MY S3T WORK FOR TH3 W33K 4ND 1NT3ND ON DO1NG SOM3 3XTR4 STUDY.

AG: Wow, I totally give a shit!!!!!!!!

AG: Anyway, if you’re done you should come flarping with me!!!!!!!!

GC: NO, 1 TH1NK 1 SH4LL T4K3 SOM3 T1M3 TO GO OVER MY N3W T3XT BOOK ON 1MP3R14L L4W >:]

AG: Oh you know what, f8ck you!!!!!!!!

AG: You h8ven’t even started st8dying imperial fucking law!!!!!!!!

Heh heh heh, you pissed her off and now you’ve got her busting out the 8’s. She’s been a bit temperamental lately, so it wasn’t really difficult.

Honestly, you think flarping sounds like a lot of fun right now, but you’ll give it a miss.

You didn’t get all this food from the fridge for nothing.

GC: SORRY VR1SK4,

GC: SOM3 OF US DON’T H4V3 T1M3 FOR S1LLY G4M3S 4NYMORE.

AG: Oh, coming from the girl who still pl8ys make believe courtrooms with her st8ffed dolls!

GC: SC4L3M4T3S.

GC: 4ND TH4T 1S L3G1SL4C3RATOR PR4CT1C3.

AG: fuck you.

AG: I’m outta here.

-- arachnidsGrip [AG] ceased trolling gallowsCalibrator [GC] at 13:08 --

Wait a second, wait a second, wait a second, wait a sec…

-- arachnidsGrip [AG] began trolling gallowsCalibrator [GC] at 13:09 --

AG: w8, w8,

AG: I came across some info on the internet earlier.

AG: I thought it was quite interesting >:::;D

GC: OH, H3LLO VR1SKA, B4CK SO SOON?

AG: You shut the fuck up!!!!!!!!

AG: I’m trying to talk here.

GC: GO ON.

AG: So, I found some idiots talking in a public chat,

AG: practically just giving away details on a specific place >:::;)

GC: VR1SK4 NO.

GC: YOU’R3 NOT GO1NG ON 4BOUT TH1S 4G41N.

AG: Yes, Yes I 8m, 8nd you c8n’t stop me!!!!!!!!

AG: I’m gonna f8nd it, and if yo8’re going to be l8ke this every t8me, I’m not t8king you with me.

GC: 1 DON’T C4R3, B3C4US3 1T DO3SNT 3X1ST.

AG: F8ck you.

-- arachnidsGrip [AG] blocked gallowsCalibrator [GC]! --

Eh, oh well.

She’ll be back.

You don’t know why she would want to get out of here, she got drawn a pretty good lot in the blood colour draw, so she’s living pretty good.

If you really think about it though, this planet is pretty shitty.

Yeah, if you didn’t have you Legislacerator dreams, you’d probably be with her on finding the Utopia.

Chapter 39: Your name is Vriska Serket

Chapter Text

You are sick and tired of people not listening to you.

You know it’s out there, and you’re not going to rest until you find it.

Well, okay, you will rest, because what’s a treasure hunt when you’re too tired to even enjoy it?

In a way, that’s mostly what this is to you.

A huge treasure hunt, to find the greatest treasure ever known to troll-kind.

But mostly, because it’s the only place you could go where you aren’t under the control of the empire. True, your blue blood lets you live in comfort, and gets you almost anything you want, but you have to do what the empire wants.

It’s always “you’re a blue blood, you have a good education, you must use your skills for the good of the empire!” or “you shouldn’t do this, or act like that, you’re a highblood!” ugh, they’re so controlling.

The way you’re going, they’ll make you take an extra five sweeps of schoolfeeding because you’re smarter than the average blue-blood.

And you won’t even get to choose what you’re studying for.

They’ll be all like, “you’re good at this completely boring or shitty and completely mundane job, let’s make you do this for the rest of your life!”

No thank you.

You would much rather do something more interesting, like cause the fall of the empire.

But none of your so-called “friends” would agree to commit such treason, so you shall settle for second best; busting out of here and finding the utopia.

Then proclaiming yourself queen.

No wait, appointing someone else as queen and then taking to the seas as a pirate who will ultimately bring down the queen and take over! Only to do it all again!

Now that, sounds like a good way to spend your life.

It’ll be just like flarping, but better!

All of your friends say it’s not real though, but you know it is.

You have spent far too much time on the darker, and less legal (shhhhhhhh, don’t tell Pyrope!) sides of the internet to even begin to doubt its existence. It’s there, and you know it.

But Kanaya just goes along with it, putting in a little “Yes” or “I see” or “mhmm” every now and then, and Terezi downright denies it completely.

But that’s okay.

You’ll be the one laughing in the end.

Now you’ve just got to find someone who’ll believe you.

Preferably a bunch of low bloods so you can boss them around.

Yes, you will make a brilliant captain of your low-blooded crew.

Chapter 40: NEPETA: Snooze

Chapter Text

You are so warm and comfy right now, you never ever, ever want to move!

You snuggle in closer to your Lusus happily and let out a little purr.

Your lazy, serene mindset is interrupted by a sharp meow.

You open your eyes slowly, blinking a lot while you’re at it. You look up to see your Lusus’ double mouth is no longer smiling.

Pounce nudges you with her head and a cold feeling arises in your gut when you realize what has happened.

You’ve overslept.

Pounce did too, by the looks of it.

You jump up, grab your coat, don your gloves, stuff your feet in your shoes and run out of your little cave-hive as fast as you can. Pounce has already left, off to begin hunting in an attempt to make up for lost time.

You spot a trail of some sort in the dirt.

You bend down to take a look at it. The trail appears to belong to something quite large, the huge paw prints were almost twice as big as your hand.

In cases like this, you’d usually call over your Lusus, but today you’re going to have to take down this beast alone.

You follow it for almost an hour, with no sign of any other wildlife. For a few months now, you’ve noticed a decline in the local fauna, due to mostly your and Pounce’s hunting here. Most of the other hunters from the village nearby hunt elsewhere, but close by, sometimes, you’ll run off course on a hunt, or someone else will, and you’ll run into each other. The villagers are generally nice people, but you still prefer your little cave hive, and some of them think you’re a bit weird, so that was the main reason you moved away all those sweeps ago.

Still on the trail, you hear something moving up ahead and drop into a wide crouch in the tall grass, ready to leap up or run away within seconds.

Slowly moving your hands to the ground, you use them to steady yourself as you creep along.

After another dozen minutes or so, you are almost close enough to pounce.

You draw out your claws from inside your gloves.

You look up to see some sort of large dog-beast.

Claws at the ready, you leap up and pounce on your enormous unsuspecting prey.

-

It is nearly daybreak and you are just about ready to collapse.

Dragging your feet with a limp, you fall down on your bed of animal hides without taking off your coat, gloves or even your shoes, and just let exhaustion take you over.

Pounce returns shortly after. She took in all of your catch from tonight, as she does most nights, and curls up around you, licking your uncleaned wounds.

Going after that beast alone was a mistake, but you brought it down eventually.

You hope your wounds don’t get infected overnight, or you’ll be taking a few days off because of it.

You would love just a day to yourself, but you really can’t afford the consequences.

Maybe it’s time you took off for a while.

No, you could never do that, the bluebloods would have the villagers themselves hunt you down.

If only you could stall them for a few days, then you could take off and no one would ever know where you’d gone.

Oh well, no use worrying over the impossible.

Sleepy time now.

Chapter 41: VRISKA: Set 8rilliant plan into motion!!!!!!!!

Chapter Text

Your name is Vriska Serket and it is time to put your brilliant plan into action!!!!!!!!

Okay, well not really, but you like to think it is.

You have spent your whole night and about half the day on Trollian recruiting low bloods for you to boss around.

You won’t admit to anyone that it’s not going well. Not even yourself.

The lowest blooded troll you’ve come across here is a Jade blood, and you already know her. You know Kanaya won’t join you because she has her responsibilities down in the breeding caverns, but you’ll save her as a last resort. If you knew more about her and her exact location, you’d have little difficulty using your mind powers on her.

If only rust bloods used Trollian. You’d have a million sworn to your allegiance by now.

But your plan does not just consist of building an army, oh no.

That’s just the back-up plan.

Your plan is to find out as much as you can about the utopia off the internet, and when you’ve used up all your sources there, you will go out and find more information yourself.

Once you know all there is to know, you’ll figure out a way to get there.

Then, you’ll figure out how to get to your way to get there.

It sounds like a simple, stupid plan, but you know what you’re doing.

As far as you can tell, the Utopia seems to be another planet, rather than just a hidden away safe-haven. This makes your plan for ruling the high seas a lot closer to being in your grasp.

First you need followers though.

And if they do not willingly come to you make them.

You haven’t told Terezi as much of your plan as you’d like, because miss goody-two-shoes would run straight to the authorities and your culling status would no longer be on the ranks of “excellent”.

You think though, that if you can talk to Kanaya enough, she’ll come around and decide to join you.

You know she doesn’t like being in the caverns anyway.

If only the lime bloods weren’t dead, there’d probably be a heap of them on Trollian. Free for you to manipulate as you wish.

Oh well, you guess it’s more of a challenge this way.

You get back to Trollian to see Kanaya is back online.

Pffffffff, who cares about last resorts fuck that shit.

-- arachnidsGrip [AG] began trolling grimAuxilliatrix [GA] at 05:31 --

AG: kanayaaaaaaaa

GA: Hello Vriska It Has Been A While Since I Last Heard From You

AG: yeah I know, I’ve 8een 8usy and stuff.

AG: sooooooo,

AG: what are you dooooooooing????????

GA: Eating And Getting Ready To Sleep

GA: I Should Hope You Are Doing The Same It Is Five AM Vriska.

AG: 8luuuuuuuuh, who needs sleep when there’s work to 8e done????????

GA: Well

AG: don’t you sass me

GA: I Wasn’t Going To

AG: yes you were!!!!!!!! I can tell! >:::;)

GA: Very Well Then

GA: Did You Want To Talk About Anything In Particular Or Were You Just Stopping By To Say Hi

AG: stopping to say hi of course!

GA: Really

AG: Yes!!!!!!!!

AG: also I was kinda hoping to talk to you about something.

GA: I Knew It

AG: shush you!!!!!!!!

AG: I just dug up some new inform8tion on the you-know-what :::;D

GA: Vriska Not This Again

AG: the fuck did I just say?

GA: Shushing now

AG: anyway, I thought you might 8e interested.

AG: in coming with me, that is.

GA: You Want Me To Go With You

AG: duhhhhhhhh, I just said that!

GA: Vriska Even If This Place Was Real, I Could Not Go With You

AG: Yeah, 8ecause of all your responsi8ilities and shit, but I know you h8 it there Kanaya!

AG: if you come with me and whoever else I can recruit, you wont have to worry a8out any of that anymore!

AG: you could 8e free to do whatever you want!

GA: Vriska I Have To Stay Here Regardless

GA: Without Me Here The Other Jade Blood Would Be Left On Her Own

GA: And If She Were To Die Prematurely, Our Race Would Surely Die Out

AG: im sure a 8unch of wrigglers can t8ke care of themselves!

GA: Its Not The Wrigglers Im Worried About Its More About The Mother Grub Herself

GA: If She Is Not Tended To She Could Grow Ill And Die Before The Next Mother Grub Is Ready

GA: And She Herself Is Not Able to Take The Genetic Material Herself To-

AG: okay, okay, I g8t it, we don’t need to start talking a8out genetic material and 8uckets and stuff.

AG: 8ut you really should consider it.

AG: joining, me th8t is.

GA: Thank You Vriska But I Don’t Think I Can

GA: I Must Go I Am Sorry But I Do Need My Sleep

AG: 8luuuuuuuuh, fine.

AG: goodmorning I guess.

GA: Good Morning

GA: Also I Recommend You Get Some Sleep Too

-- grimAuxilliatrix [GA] has ceased trolling arachnidsGrip [AG] at 05:58 --

That could have gone better but you tried.

She’ll come around, just wait and see.

Chapter 42: NEPETA: Gather your things

Chapter Text

Your name is Nepeta Leijon and you have been preparing for this moment for nearly two weeks now.

You are quickly gathering up your few possessions and tying them all together in an old animal skin.

Almost two weeks ago, your Lusus had decided to kick you out of the cave and send you packing. Not in a mean way though, she had the best intentions at heart. She wanted you to run away and live out in the woods, or somewhere far away.

The two of you had thought up a devious plan, you weren’t all that happy with it as it would not only possibly endanger yourself, but put Pounce in a lot of danger too. You see, the plan was, for you to run away one evening, and keep moving under the cover of the forest for several days. Whilst you were gone, Pounce would continue hunting and delivering the catch to the village square in your absence. After a few days, once your trail was no longer recognisable, Pounce would not haul in any catch, causing the blue bloods to come searching for an explanation and to deliver punishment. When they returned to see an empty cave, inhabited by only a lazy cat-beast Lusus, they’d set out looking for you, and all in the wrong directions. They’d quickly give up and Pounce would be free to leave without suspicion and run out to meet you. Pounce would be the only one able to find you as the two of you had discussed the directions you must go in order to meet up again.

However, if anything went wrong at all, the two of you would be surely culled.

Many things could go wrong with this plan, you could be caught before you even make it to the deep woods, your trail and scent might not wear away completely, and if you get caught, Pounce is certain to come to your defence. You would be culled without trail for abandoning your work and Pounce would be charged with aiding a fugitive.

The moons are setting and you are standing at the mouth of your cave awaiting the return of your lusus. When you hear her pounding across the grassy ground, you turn to look at her. She leaps up onto the mouth of the cave where you are standing in one swift movement and quickly nuzzles her face into yours.

‘Time to go now, hey?’ you say to her calmly, though you are just beginning to freak out a little. She responds with a deep and comforting mewl and continues to rub her soft furry face all over yours.

‘Okay then. I guess I’ll see you in a few days?’

‘Merrooow.’

You walk back into your cave hive once more to retrieve your little bag made of hide and look up at your shipping wall one last time.

You’d spent almost the last three sweeps filling it with your ships in bright, bloody colours. Even before you came to live here. All of your friends, and your… not-so-much-of-a-friends and your old pre-collection friends, and really everyone you ever knew and ever met. So much work has gone into this wall and now you must leave it behind. In your opinion, it is a masterpiece. Both an art and a shipping masterpiece. This was where you’d gladly spent all your free time.

You walk up and place a gloved hand over one of the ships. This one had always been your OTP. Out of all of your ships, this one was your favourite. One of your oldest ships, but definitely the best. You smile down almost lovingly at the old, long faded picture of a young little girl in a way-too-big green jacket standing next to a cranky looking blue blood.

You place a quick kiss on your gloved knuckles and extend two fingers out in a half diamond shape so that the tips touched the wall where the picture was.

You turn your head away and walk back to Pounce who is still waiting for you at the cave’s mouth. You pull her into a tight hug and whisper a goodbye and a promise to meet again before stepping away to the edge of the rock that made up your cave.

You turn your head back to take one last look at the colourful walls before stepping off the ledge and quickly breaking into a run across the grassy plains as the sun slowly begins to rise.

Chapter 43: VRISKA: Cause trouble

Chapter Text

Your name is Vriska Serket and it is high time you started to stir up some shit.

Despite all of Terezi’s warnings over the sweeps and claims of how ridiculous your plans are, you are going through with them anyway. You do not give a fuck about what she says. Scourge sister or not. She’ll come around.

With your failed plan to recruit trolls over Trollian, you decided to head out to the nearest town to see if you can recruit any followers there.

The town houses both green and blue bloods, depending on how close to the city centre their hives are. The blue (mostly teal) bloods live closer to the city and attend the schools and academies there, whereas the green bloods live further out for the most part, and work somewhere in the city. Some in factories, some as house-keepers for the more well-off blue bloods.

Green is the only caste where your amount of freedom depends on where you live. Well, Olive is, the few existing Jade bloods don’t have a choice in anything, and Lime bloods don’t even exist at all anymore. The Olive bloods that live way out in the middle of nowhere will most likely be raised to work all night, dusk till dawn, whereas those who live within small cities tend to work shifts in factories, own and work shops, and even work within blue blooded hives and schools.

You’re headed out to the further-out part of town tonight, you think for now, you’ll leave the trolls associated with blue bloods alone.

When you arrive in one of the Olive blood districts to see the town slowly coming to life.

It’s early, barely after sundown, you are surprised that you managed to drag your ass out of the recupercoon this evening. The Olive bloods are all running around, opening roller-doors and setting up shop fronts, rushing boxes and crates around to various buildings. Everyone’s too busy to stop and chat, so you decide to wander for a while.

After about half an hour, the street is packed full of olive blooded trolls, running this direction and that, brushing past you and accidentally bumping shoulders with you, stopping for barely a moment with a “sorry Miss!” and continuing on, swearing and yelling at every other Olive blood on the street. You chuckle for a moment as you think about how higher they see you in comparison to themselves all because of a coloured symbol on your shirt.

After an hour or so, things have calmed down a bit, Trolls rushing around to do a bit of shopping on their break, and the occasional troll just taking a casual stroll on their day off.

First of all, you decide to take a walk down to the shadier part of town, where you are assaulted with dozens of trolls trying to sell you a number of strange items. You shake them off, one by one with a wave of your hand, but some still persist.

‘Hey, back off.’ Is all it takes to make them run for the hills.

You slip off the street and down into a dark, narrow alleyway. You squeeze through the gap between the grimy wall and a dumpster before you see the first troll. Slumped against the wall and up against another dumpster, head bowed, apparently unconscious. Your first thought was that she was a drunk, but as you passed you noticed a pair of very much alert eyes following you from behind a long, unkempt fringe. Further along, you can hear laughter. The alleyway seemed to stretch on forever. You remember passing a street before and you realize this must go along the back of it. You squeeze past another dumpster to find the source of the earlier heard laughter. A small group of olive bloods stand together near another dumpster and fall to a sudden silence as your presence becomes known.

‘Well, well, well, Little Miss spoilt brat seems to have strayed a little too far from the school-yard!’ says one of them. They all have to be at least nine sweeps old.

‘School’s not my thing.’ You say with a slight smirk as you lean back against the last dumpster, only to realise the thing was filthy and you try to recoil without letting them see.

‘So what is your thing, Sweetie?’ he says, smirk spread widely across his face.

‘I have my business, you have yours.’ You say. ‘Also, don’t call me sweetie.’ You add with a smile that you could almost count as sweet.

‘Aww, The brat doesn’t like being called Sweetie.’ He says as he turns to his friends who begin to laugh.

‘What exactly do you like to be called then, Sweetie?’ he says as he saunters towards you and takes a hold on your right arm.

You look up at him before taking hold of his arm and twisting it sharply. When he bends down slightly, you give him a quick knee to the teeth and while your leg is in the air, you pull it down on top of his head. You crouch down and look at him with a sweet smile for a moment as if he were a wounded animal before grabbing him by the collar of his shirt.

‘Vriska Serket.’ You say in response to his question. ‘Remember the name.’

Smirking, you brush off your jacket, straighten your glasses and walk through the rest of the trolls who part as you approach and disappear past the next dumpster with a flick of your hair.

Beaming with pride and satisfaction, you are greeted with the end of the ally-way. A window-less metal door is on the back wall.

Well, you aren’t going to go back through the way you came, that would ruin your exit, so the door is really the only way to go.

If it’s not unlocked, you’ll just have to make whoever stands behind it open it for you.

Chapter 44: NEPETA: wander

Chapter Text

It has been eight nights since you ran away. Three since your Lusus found you.

The two of you have been living out in the forests, sleeping under bushes or high in trees during the day and hunting as soon as the sun set. The food out here is plentiful, as there are hunters or farmers for miles, and everything is peaceful. You have to admit, you do kind of feel like you are disturbing the peace with your presence and your hunting, but you’ve got to eat. And so does Pounce.

You never realised how stressed out you were, back living near the village, because since you’d moved out here, you’ve noticed how much more relaxed you’ve become, how easier it is to sleep, how much more enjoyable it is to hunt. Everything is easier out here. No deadlines to meet. No quotas to fill. You just move along each day at your own pace, your lusus at your side.

It is just as you are strolling along that you find a gold coin on the ground. You reach down and pick it up with a gloved hand. You inspect it quickly.

‘What do you think?’ you ask Pounce. Who responds with a loud “Mrrow!”

‘There might be a village ahead.’ you say. ‘I wonder if we can get anything for this?’ you say, flicking the coin up and catching it in your palm before pocketing it. The two of you continue onward until you spot smoke in the sky. You continue towards the smoke until you find the source.

You emerge from the woods and into the outskirts of a village, the smoke pours from one of the many chimneys. You decide that, it is much to large to be a village, and that you have stumbled upon a small town.

You spend the day in a dark alleyway with your lusus. As it turns out, one gold coin could buy you nothing, so you decide to keep it and hopefully develop a small collection of them.

At nightfall, you explore the village a little. No one there thinks anything of you, as they all appear to be olive bloods too, and quite a few still have their lusii, so you fit in here just fine. Though, you do wonder why there are children playing on the streets here, and trolls casually chatting away, when in your village there were blue bloods everywhere commanding you to work and work and work.

Something’s up here. That just isn’t fair.

You think perhaps one day you might find out what this is all about, but for now, you still need to keep you head down a bit and keep moving.

Chapter 45: Speakeasy

Chapter Text

On the shady side of town you managed to scrounge up quite a few olive bloods who are sick of this bullshit and now worship you as their leader. Well, they respect you and acknowledge your presence, which if you think hard enough it could be considered worship. Maybe. Anyway, the point is, they all follow you. They listen to your brilliant plans and do pretty much whatever you tell them. Oh, and they have a secret hideout, which makes them pretty much the best minions ever.

Their hideout is an old basement, built in secret about twenty sweeps ago to be a wine cellar and a hiding place for stolen goods, and basically to keep things away from the prying eyes of the highbloods and their spies.

It now operates as a speakeasy.

An actual fucking speakeasy. And you thought olive bloods were lame.

It was a place to purchase alcohol, which is illegal for anyone under a teal caste to consume as everyone under that needs to be sober enough to work, and a trading place for illegal items. The perfect place for your little meetings.

Okay, so you may have gotten drunk once or twice.

Okay, so you may have made a total fool of yourself.

Okay, so you are currently stuck out in an empty alleyway drunkenly murmuring to yourself.

Big fucking deal who cares.

You just beg nobody tells Terezi because she will woop your ass so bad you won’t be able to sit for a perigee.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Awake now? Awake is good.

Ouch no, awake is not good, light is bright.

You sit up against the wall and look out onto the street. Trolls are rushing around everywhere.

Noise, no. Light, no.

Back inside it is.

You get to your feet and stumble into the alley again and make your way down.

It takes you about five minutes to find the door at the end, because unlike the alleyway you encountered on your first trip into the city, which had a clearly visible door, the door here is made of flat metal.

The wall here is made of flat metal.

You spend that five minutes feeling around on the wall until you find the handle. You push it in, then grab the side and pull it open.

Slamming the door shut behind you, (and instantly regretting it) you violently rap your fist on the door until you hear a muffled complaint on the other side.

‘Who the bloody hell is it?!’ you hear as the tiny window in the top of the door slides open. You make sure you are flipping them off before they even look out the window.

‘Here so early, Miss Serket?’

‘Just let me in, Mel.’

Mellio Skartz runs the speakeasy along with his matesprit, Chuula. He opens the door and gives you a nod of the head as you quickly stride past. Without waiting for another word from Mellio, you flip open the trap door in the floor, which loudly hits the ground and causes you to clench your fists to you head and curse, before climbing down the steep staircase beneath it. You walk through the door at the bottom, wondering why it wasn’t locked and storm into the bar and plonk yourself on a chair at some random table in the middle of the room.

‘Good morning, Miss, I trust you slept well?’

You respond to Chuula by flipping her off, without even lifting your head from the table. You probably just flipped off the air beside her but you don’t care. You suddenly notice the smell of food and your stomach growls quietly.

‘This might help.’ She says, placing a hand on your shoulder. From what you can hear, she’s placed a plate beside you. You whip your head up, fairly certain you just whipped

Chuula in the face with you hair and look at the contents of the plate before you.

Bacon and eggs. Fuck yes.

You dig straight into your breakfast without even questioning why Chuula had it prepared for you.

A few minutes later, Mellio storms into the bar and asks Chuula if his breakfast is ready. She tells him she’ll start cooking now and he looks at you with a face of disgust.

You realise Chuula has given you his breakfast and you stick your tongue out at him before stuffing your face with more bacon.

You spend your night there, chatting with the owners and discussing plans with the other olive bloods who wander through.

Everything seems to be going well.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Two weeks have passed and you are growing impatient.

Tomorrow, you take your army, and take over the city.

You’ll use your new power and riches to get you the means to get off this fucking planet.

Tomorrow, you rise to Victory.

Chapter 46: Wrigglers and Grubs

Chapter Text

By the time that you would assume to be daybreak, you make it back to your respiteblock and begin preparing a meal for yourself. You are tired and hungry and would rather enjoy a nice cup of tea and a warm meal before taking your rest. Your day has been quite long and tiresome; you awoke before sunset and began your rounds throughout the caverns.

Truth be told, after your rounds and a few other housekeeping chores, there isn’t all that much for you to do. You just like tending to the wrigglers. They are just so tiny and fragile when they first hatch, you cannot help but try to keep them safe. Even the ones who are a few nights old, whose skin has hardened to become protective like a shell, and have grown to almost twice their size are just so precious, you can’t stand it when they die or get killed. You try to allow as many as possible to escape through the trial caverns, though once they reach the surface, they’re on their own. It’s up to them to be strong enough to survive until they are taken away by a lusus. If they can stay sheltered deep enough in the desert sands to hide from the sun, avoid being attacked by lusus from another caste and other grubs and creatures, then they will be taken off by a lusus, to (hopefully) live a full and happy life.

You aren’t supposed to tend to them, only the very newborns if absolutely necessary, “Only the strong are raised from Alternia”, though on several occasions, you have been known to nurse grubs so much as to take them into your respite block if they are ill or hurt.

Oh well, it’s not like there is anyone down here to scold you for your actions.

More than once you have considered keeping one, taking care of it as if you were its lusus. Though, that is quite absurd, Trolls don’t care for grubs unless they are, well, you, or another jade blood, but if you were to care for one, you would be denying them the chance to live up on the beautiful surface. You are also giving them the chance of dying as soon as they reach the surface, but still.

Sometimes you wonder what would have happened if you weren’t born a jade blood, had your Virgin Mother Grub lusus not picked you from the mass of night-old wrigglers and taken you with her. Would you have survived the trials? Would you have made it to the surface? Would you have been chosen by a lusus before falling victim to predators and the sun? Would you have grown up rich and wealthy, or poor? Would you have had many friends? Perhaps you could have grown up with Vriska, and maybe kept her out of trouble a little better.

You imagine that, Growing up living in a hive not far from hers. The two of you might have been best friends. She might not have gotten into so much trouble. You two might’ve shared a quadrant. Imagine growing up to be Vriska’s matesprit, or even her moirail. Maybe if you’d gotten to live with her as a child you might not long for her company so much, and therefore be more than happy just being her friend, or even an austpistice.

You eat your meal and sip on you tea as a tone sounds from your husktop.

You set down your plate and carry your tea over to your desk and open up Trollian.

You have received a message from your beloved Serket herself. You wonder what mischief you will have to scold her for this time.

You open up the chat window and her message surprises you, to say the least.

-- arachnidsGrip [AG] began trolling grimAuxilliatrix [GA] at 05:31 --

AG: Kanaya

AG: I f8cked up.

Chapter 47: Accusation

Chapter Text

You spent the evening bathing and snacking on cherry cakes whilst in the ablution tub, after you spent about an hour dragging yourself out of your recoupercoon. When you’re done in the ablution block, you dress yourself in black jeans and a loose fitting T-shirt and get yourself a cup of extremely sweetened mocha, because you adore the taste of chocolate and you both enjoy and need the extra caffeinated boost that coffee gives you.

You plonk down on your desk chair, careful not to spill the contents of your cup before placing it on your desk to cool, and twirl slowly back and forth in your chair, occasionally allowing the chair to turn in a full circle. You tip your head back over the back rest and take a deep breath of the cool evening air coming through your large glassless window. You begin to regret not drying your hair it is starting to make you feel a bit cold, but no matter. Your hair will be dry shortly and the air will warm with the night as the moons rise.

You kick your desk as you wait for your husktop to start up. You think about how you really do need a new husktop, yours is far too slow. It’s been staring up for a few minutes now. When the log-on screen loads up, you enter your log-in credentials and hit enter, then you swing on your chair some more before picking up a book on imperial law to flick through while you wait for your desktop to load up. When it does, you don’t even move your face out of the book to click the internet icon. You tip your head back and rest the book on your face, namely your nose and glasses, and click on one of your saved bookmarks at the top of your internet screen. Still reading with your sense of smell, you open up the login webpage for a website used for young trolls entering Legislacerator training. You log in and wait for the webpage to load, before scrolling through the latest stories selected for your viewing.

You put the book down, directing your attention to the current affairs of the Alternian world, and the occasional off-world story.

You quickly read a short report on an execution and another on the arrest of a highblood before finding a slightly larger report.

The report tells of a city having been recently placed under quarantine due to a revolt staged by the olive blooded population. The olive bloods had attempted to take power of the city. Due to the scale of the revolt, around three hundred olive bloods were killed by highblooded officials and another nearly two hundred were executed for committing treason to the empire. You think treason is a bit of a stretch, but what do you know, you’re still in school. Nearly five hundred have been re-located or arrested.

And the entire thing was led by a Cerulean blood.

A young female cerulean blood with long black hair and hooked and clawed horns.

Currently unidentified.

You think it’s about time you paid your old scourge sister a visit.

Chapter 48: Flashback

Chapter Text

Everything hurts but you can’t stay here for long. The Legislacerators might not be hot on your tail, but a certain amateur might be. You’ve tested her patience enough. She’ll come and you know it.

After all the babbling about a world you aren’t even sure exists and the lying, cheating and backstabbing, and her actually catching you breaking imperial law a couple times, leading half a thousand trolls to their deaths will be her limit.

She’ll figure out it was you, she always does, and then she’ll come.

She’ll come and then you’ll have to gamble your way out unless you start moving now.

You thought about going down into Spidermom’s cavern and hiding down there. as long as your mom is there, she won’t be able to get in without being eaten. Anyway, you couldn’t hide down there with Spidermom forever, she’ll wait for you until you start to starve or dehydrate down there.

You want to take off now, but you’re starting to see double, you could probably paint the walls with the blood you’ve lost.

You slam the keys on your husktop until the screen comes to life in front of you. Terezi’s online, so you switch to invisible, hopefully before she notices. A dark green icon sits in your contact list, you look closely for a few seconds while your eyes focus and realise its Kanaya. You decide you need to talk to someone, so you type a few messages to her, but you end up deleting them all before sending them, and end up only telling her that you fucked up.

GA: Why What Is It This Time

You think as carefully as you can in your light-headed state about what you should say next and it takes you a while

AG: Its bad this time

AG: like, really b8d.

GA: What Happened Vriska

AG: I act8d stupidly

AG: bec8use i thought

AG: that i was better th8n i 8m.

AG: and a l8t of people got h8rt because of me

AG: and now i h8ve to pay for it

AG: she’s coming for me Kanaya

AG: im hurt and i cant f8ght back

AG: i dont want her to k8ll me

AG: not now

AG: not tonight

“Hey, Loser! Are you even trying to catch me?”

“No because chasing is fun!”

“But you’re supposed to catch me!”

“No I’m supposed to kill you stupid.”

“No i mean not just in the game, you’re supposed to catch me and that’s how you kill me!”

“But how’s it supposed to be any fun if i just catch you and kill you?”

“I guess you’re right. You couldn’t kill me anyway. In the game or for real!”

“Maybe, but i could arrest you!”

“Nah-uh, you’re not a Legislaceratater yet!”

“Killed you! You’re dead!”

“What? No fair!”

“Yeah it is. You’re dead bye bye!”

“No you can’t kill me! You can’t and you never will!”

“But i just did!”

“Wanna bet?”

“Hey! Don’t run off, the game’s already over!”

GA: Im Sure She Wont Cause You Any Harm

GA: She Wouldnt

AG: She would, i’ve p8shed too m8ny of her bo8ndaries

AG: she’ll th8nk she has to “br8ng me to justice”

AG: i just

AG: i want your advice

AG: on what i sh8uld do.

GA: Well If You Think You Are In Genuine Danger

GA: You Should Remove Yourself From The Immediate Area

AG: i should h8de?

GA: Exactly

AG: but where

GA: I Do Not Know Your Or Your Neighboring Lawnrings

GA: So I Am Afraid I Cannot Help With That

AG: I could always go hide with the blue blood next door

AG: except he’d probably hand me straight over because “the hi8h-bloods decree it so”

AG: but

AG: other than that

AG: ive got nowhere else to go

AG: i could just

AG: r8n

AG: i guess

GA: Well I Suppose You May Have To

GA: Unless You Can Get Out Into The Desert I Cannot Offer You Refuge

AG: its 8kay

AG: thankyou

GA: But Are You Certain She Will Come

AG: defin8tely.

“Vriska! You can’t do that!”

“Why not?”

“Well, not only is it against the law, but its mean! That’s a terrible thing to do! How could you?!”

“It’s just a stupid green blood, and besides, Spidermom needs feeding.”

“n-no, please-“

“Shut up!”

“VRISKA NO!”

“Ha ha, too late, he’s dead. Moving on.”

“No! No moving on, you just killed a troll! He was probably no older than you! Four sweeps at the most!”

“Oh shut uuuuup, stop whining.”

“No Vriska, you shut up! You can’t just kill people!”

“I can and i just did. Help me carry it back to my mom will you?”

“No i won’t! I’m not covering for you when you get arrested, not this time! We’re not friends anymore!”

“Oh boo hoo, how sad, whiny bitch.”

“I hate you! And not even in a blackrom way, Don’t speak to me!”

“Oh fuck off, dumb whore.”

AG: I should probably get moving

AG: I’ll mess8ge you l8er i guess

AG: if i dont then

AG: yeah

GA: Please Be Careful

GA: Please Please Please stay safe

AG: I will

GA: Vriska I

AG: yeah?

GA: Nothing

GA: Just

GA: Good Luck

AG: Thanks

AG: Goodb8e K8naya.

-- arachnidsGrip [AG] ceased trolling grimAuxilliatrix [GA] at 14:23 --

You grab a shoulder bag and stuff a few things into it, some more bandages and a few other medical supplies, a few snacks, a bottle of water and your set of dice.

Without even shutting down your husktop, your walk out of your castle-like hive and set out to somewhere.

“Who’re you?”

“I’m Vriska Serket, Who the fuck are you?”

“You’re mean. I don’t like you.”

“Well you’re lame, I don’t like you!”

You walk for about an hour, passing through a town and refilling your water bottle, you decide to sit down by a tree. It’ll be daybreak in a few hours; you should probably find someplace to stay. Spending too long out in the sun is dangerous and certainly won’t help your current condition.

“VRISKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!”

She screamed and cried and you could hear it. You could hear it all.

You saw her face when you slept that day, In your daymares. You’d never had daymares before now, you’d occasionally dream of a troll you’d killed or hurt, but nothing like this.

You saw her face, contorted with pain, mouth open wide and twisted down at the same time, eyes so wide that her burning eyes might fall out of their sockets, teal blood and tears dripping from her flaming eyes. She was too far away for you to make any sort of difference, but much too close for you to escape, far away and an inch from your face at the same time. Sometimes you don’t see her, but you can hear her. Sobbing and begging, ‘please, please,’. All because of a tantrum you threw.

You left her to burn in the sun.

You wake up in an alley in a small town. You didn’t bring any money so you couldn’t afford a hotel, and you didn’t want to make a scene in case she somehow tracks you and asks around for you. You get up, munch on a few of your snacks and move on again. You think you are overreacting by going this far but you never know with Terezi. But then again, you were her sister.

GC: YOU W3R3E MY SWI1ST3ER@!!

GC: HO3W COKJULD YOIU DO TH1S TO ME3???>

GC: 2M GFO1NG TI K2LL TOU

GC: 1M GOIUNR TO K12LL YOU

GC: VER1SK 1MN TOIUNG TO K1ILL YOPU

GC: YOPU W3WR NR S1STER

But she was your sister too.

‘GET HER!’

You flinch, but when you look around it’s just a other troll being chased by some cops. A whole heap of cops. Like whoa some of them probably aren’t even cops. What the fuck did that stupid troll do to get in that much trouble?? They run by you and you see that it’s just some olive blooded girl in an oversized green coat.

When everything settles down, you get up and get moving again.

“I will cut off your arm if you throw those dice again.”

“You don’t have the guts, Terezi.”

Chapter 49: I see you again

Chapter Text

They found you they found you oh fuck why are they so persistent

If they catch you, you’ll be culled for sure.

You lost pounce about a mile back, she ran off, hoping they’d follow her, thinking you were with her, but they’ve stayed on your tail. That’s a good thing you suppose, you don’t want anything bad happening to your mother.

You are almost out of breath, so you try to lose your followers, and previous superiors in the winding streets and alleyways of some old green blood town. So far, it’s not working. So far, you still have about six blue bloods on your tail. They start calling out to civilians for help, sometimes they offer a reward, so the number of trolls chasing you grows larger. You have no idea how many are behind you.

Your legs ache and you’re at the point where you can’t even keep your arms pumping and they fall to your sides. Your windpipe burns as your lungs take in as much air as they can. You turn a sharp corner and your hat slips off your head. You love that hat, but you’re no idiot, so you don’t turn back to grab it as it falls. You wind through a few side streets trying to lose your pursuers, and for once, you actually gain some distance between you and them.

You run back out into another street, it’s narrow, but empty. You can see where the town ends from here, the paved road forms down into gravel before dropping down a steep hill.

This is your chance. You run for the hill, you can see forests down further on. If you can get in there you might be able to lose them for good.

Just as that glimmer of hope arises, a troll steps out from a side street just ahead of you. You stop in your tracks, stopping just before him. You can hear your pursuers again, gaining way. The troll is tall, with long straight hair, with a dark blue symbol and is very muscular. You stare at him for a moment, wheezing as you suck in air. He stares back at you from behind dark glasses, but makes no move towards you.

Within a few seconds of stopping, you take off again.

You run as fast as you can until the road switches from paving blocks to dirt and gravel and you run down that hill without even considering the fact you might slip.

You make it to the bottom and onto the open meadow before slipping away into the forest.

Chapter 50: Goodbye, My Childhood.

Chapter Text

Oh dear lord you are so worried for Vriska.

You know Terezi, but not as well as she does, and if she says Terezi is coming after her with the intent of hurting her, she is probably right.

But she is hurt.

She is scared.

And you are so, so scared for her.

And you are so, so sick of hanging around in this room during the day sitting around and waiting for something to happen. You should have done this long ago.

A beige leather suitcase lays open on your table and you run frantically around your room grabbing this and that and tossing it in haphazardly. You toss in a few outfits, a few pairs of shoes and almost convince yourself not to take your sewing kit. With all of that in your head over to your kitchen to start grabbing some supplies, but your OCD takes over and you have to go and tidy everything in your suitcase up. You wish you hadn’t because it used up nearly five precious minutes. When that is done you grab armfuls of non-perishable foods and a few bottles of water, some frozen and toss them into a smaller bag, which in turn, is tossed into the suitcase. You dress yourself in a more easier to move in outfit, with a shorter skirt and a pair of tight shorts underneath in case you found your skirt too difficult to move in in whatever situation you found yourself in. your shirt has long, loose sleeves and you try to find a hat, though you are certain you don’t own one, since you don’t like them much and have no use for them in an underground cavern, so you settle on a thick green veil.

You, regretfully, place your dark, jade green flats into the suitcase. They are you absolute favourite pair of shoes, but they are no shoes to be traversing a desert in. you find a pair of socks and some lace-up shoes.

After a bit of squishing, your suitcase closes and clips up. You lift it, but put it down again quickly as you run back to your desk, pull out the plugs for you lift it, but put it down again quickly as you run back to your desk, pull out the plugs for your laptop, and throw it all in the suitcase and force it closed again. You then pick up your lipstick tube and stow it in your pocket. You lift the suitcase, which is regrettably much heavier than you’d hoped and leave your respiteblock, switching off the lights and closing the door behind you.

As you walk down the caverns tunnels, you remember all the times Vriska had asked you to join her, to help her and to leave this place and go with her. If you had just gone, this might not have happened. You could have stopped her doing whatever it was she did and saved her from all this.

You quicken your pace as you begin to descend further and further into the tunnels until you reach the central breeding cavern.

It’s so dark down here with only the low, dull light from the Mothergrub’s bioluminescent skin and long unused wings to light the entire cavern.

You haven’t been down here for sweeps.

You haven’t seen your Lusus in just as long.

‘Kanaya?’ calls a voice from somewhere you can’t see.

‘Lady Valtri?’ you call back, hearing the sweet, kind voice of a familiar troll. Katila Valtri is the only other Jade blooded troll that is known to currently exist; she is the troll who tends to the mother grub.

‘What are you doing down here darling? Why do you carry that case in your hand?’ She sounds a lot older than she did last time you spoke to her. Her eyesight must be amazing if she knows it’s you and can see what you’re holding down here.

‘I-’ you start, but hesitate. ‘I must betray both you and my duty here. I- I need to do something important.’

She makes no sound, but when she does you know she has stepped towards you because her voice sounds closer.

‘What does this “important” task involve, Kanaya?’

‘It- it involves a friend. She is in a lot of danger right now and she could die, she got hurt bad, and not only could that kill her, but she is being followed but someone who will not hesitate to take her life.’

‘She is a good person?’

‘Y-yes, she’s done some bad things, but she is a good person, i know it.’

‘You would trust her?’ her voice sounds even closer. She must have walked closer, or is probably just walking towards you very slowly, and is just very quiet as she does. You look up towards where the voice is.

‘With my life.’

‘And she is important to you?’

‘Yes, she is. The most important person i know. I mean, other than yourself and our Empress, of course.’

‘Then, i see no reason why your “duty” should play any role in this. No one will be harmed by your departure, i am here to care for the Mothergrub, and Therefore I see no reason why you should consider this betrayal. You have come to bid farewell, and did not take off without notice, and you have a duty to your friend to fulfil. Go on, dear, i will be fine here.’ You can see her now, she stands much taller than you, and only a few feet in front of you can see her now, she stands much taller than you, and only a few feet in front of you.

‘But the grubs-’

‘Can take care of themselves, can they not? Also i have received a few complaints from the grub population monitors saying too many are getting through the trials, only the strong must get through, have you had anything to do with this?’ she asks with a small smirk.

‘I- I’m sorry.’

‘It is fine Kanaya, compassion is a wonderful trait to be blessed with.’ She says as she places a cool hand upon your face. ‘Now go, you must hurry if your friend is in danger, say goodbye to your mother and be off!’ she says, pulling her hand away quickly and pointing her arm towards the exit, he long veil brushing over your face quickly as she does.

You turn towards the massive Mothergrub in the centre of the cavern. You place a hand upon her side as you remember when she was barely as high as you were tall, now she nearly scrapes the ceiling with her back. You press yourself against her soft side and listen to her breathing for a moment before saying ‘Goodbye Mom.’ Softly.

A massive, long, black leg like you would find on an insect reaches up and touches the back of your head, as if she were trying to hold you to her side. You both know this is the last time you will ever see her and you are hit with a sudden wave of intense sadness. You are starting to miss her already and you don’t want to go. You haven’t seen her in over a sweep and you don’t want to leave her again. You’ve spent your whole life waiting to get out of this place and now you don’t want to leave it.

But she moves her leg down from behind you and you know it’s time to go.

You take a few steps back and you instantly want to run back to her warm side and hug her again.

You turn to Lady Valtri and hope she cannot see the tears that are threatening to roll out of your eyes.

‘Fear not, Kanaya dear, it shouldn’t be long before a new Jade blooded troll is sent down here to take your place.’ You nod and hope she sees.

‘Now before you go, I need to tell you something quickly.’

You give her your fullest attention as she sounds very serious.

‘The troll who trained me down in the caverns once told me a story, i do not have the time to tell it to you now, but i can summarise it quickly. That troll was told by the troll before her, who was told by the troll before her, who was told by the troll before her, that one of the jade trolls in her day took off from the caverns to help someone in need, a tiny grub. Most would have left him to die, but she saved him. That troll, is known by the few who know her story, as the Dolorosa. No one remembers her first name, but some remember her last. It was Maryam.’

‘You mean, she was my ancestor?’

‘I mean she very well could have been. But my point was, she took off to help someone like you did and she protected them for many, many sweeps.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘Well, she laid down her life to protect him, but his life was lost instead. She was probably the only troll to have shared the pain of a Lusus who’d lost their grub. But my point is, she did what she thought was right, and she protected that person close to her for many, many sweeps, so I’m sure, that you have the potential to save this friend of yours from this situation she is in.’

‘Thank you, I will do my very best, but i must find her first.’

‘Good luck dear, now off with you, your friend needs saving.’

‘Thank you, Lady Valtri, i will miss you.’

‘And i you, dear. Just remember, you do not know how the world works out there, both the nature, and the nature of society, be careful.’

‘I will.’

‘Good girl.’ She says with a warm smile.

And with that, you drop your suitcase again and run back to your mother one last time.

‘I love you mother.’ Is all you say before running back, grabbing your suitcase and bolting out the door. You notice the dull green light get brighter as you leave, your mother is trying to light your way.

You will never forget that.

You will never forget her.

You have to stop before the cavern’s opening to sit down and breathe while the tears flow down your face and you unsuccessfully fight off an aching sob.

You know you rarely got to see them, but at least you always knew you could abandon your post and run down at any time.

You’ll never see Lady Valtri again.

You will never see your mother again.

You miss her so much already.

Chapter 51: Goodbye Sister,

Chapter Text

You found her tonight.

You found her up on the top of all these rocks just standing there, like she knew you were coming, just waiting for you.

‘Serket,’

‘Pyrope,’

The two of you greet each other almost as though nothing is wrong.

The two of you stand facing each other on the almost flat surface of a large rock which must have looked over a lake or something at some point. Now everything here is dry.

Still slightly out of breath from climbing up here, you watch – well, smell really– her stare at you few at least a few minutes.

‘The Legislacerators are going to come for you, you know.’

‘You honestly think i was expecting any different? Let them come, they can’t lay a hand on me.’

You take in a deep breath as you notice how she’s fidgeting and playing with the ends of her hair with her good hand. Nervous though she’s still herself.

‘Hmph, i thought as much.’ You tilt your head up to face her a little better. With a deep breath, you begin to speak. ‘Vriska you have not only killed several trolls, but you have lead hundreds more to their deaths and caused absolute chaos within the middle class society. You have attempted a revolt against the high bloods and lead many low bloods to give themselves to your cause. You have committed treason against the empire and will be punished by death.’ You draw your sword from your cane. If you don’t stop her now, she’ll keep going till she gets caught. And when she does, she’ll be tortured and humiliated and publicly executed. You try to force yourself to look at this as if you are doing her a favour.

But the question is, does she deserve a favour?

The real question is, despite how mad you are at her and how much you platonically hate her, can you really kill her?

‘Still playing your little law games?’ she says as she draws a sword of her own. She smirks and says ‘Come and get me then.’

Yes. You can kill her. And you will.

It all ended in a throw of her dice and a flip of a coin.

She made a bad roll, so you gave her a choice, stay, or go.

The side the coin landed on didn’t matter. You could twist it in your favour either way, it was really her taking the gamble.

The coin was flipped, and she turned to leave. Just turned her back straight to you without even a metres distance between the two of you. To humiliate you, you suppose, to show no matter how unprotected she was, you still wouldn’t be able to touch her. You knew she had been scared, but you guess her pride would have left her no choice but to at least pretend to emit full confidence in everything she did.

As she began to step away, you were overtaken by both rage and misery as you plunged your sword into her back.

She let out a sharp “ah!” before falling to her knees and completely collapsing to the ground.

And with that, the great Vriska Serket was dead.

And with that, you hugged your legs to your chest and began to mourn for your sister.

Chapter 52: So long, Sister

Chapter Text

By the time you saw her coming, it was too late to keep moving.

How would it look to her if you just ran away?

A coward, that’s what you would look like, a lame lamey fakey coward.

So, you stood, and waited.

You had not come unprepared, you had brought your cutlass with you, tucked safely away in your jacket, and by the looks of it, she had brought only her cane. You could handle this, a blind girl with a cane, no trouble.

Still part of you still knew that even unarmed she’d still be dangerous. But no match for you.

When she drew her own sword from within her cane is when you started to worry. But as the fight continued, you knew you still held the upper hand. She was growing tired, and she seemed to be losing the will to fight, the need to kill. She’s just as she always was, far too merciful for her own good.

But suddenly, with a lucky move on her part, you were swordless, and she had hers about an inch from your throat.

Quick as a flash you kicked up your leg and threw yourself backwards, kicking her arm hard enough to make her lose her grip on the blade and also getting you away from its point.

Without a second to lose, you shoved your hand into the pocket inside your jacket and withdrew your dice set, your treasured Fluorite Octet and threw the dice to your feet.

You got a shit roll, being just how unlucky you are, and it did shit all damage to Terezi.

Knocked her sword clean out of her reach though.

Your plan had been to wait for her to go retrieve her sword and pick up your octet while she was doing so, but she must have seen that coming and stepped on your dice before you could reach for them.

Then, being an obvious tie. She gave you a choice.

Gamble everything on a toss of the coin.

the rules: Heads, you stay. Scratch, you go.

Not very clearly explained rules, though you have a feeling that was intentional. You knew that no matter what side the coin landed on, she could twist it to suit herself. The real gamble was, do you think she would actually kill you or not?

You had a feeling, that no, she wouldn’t.

You were still kind of terrified of her right now though.

‘Go on, flip the coin,’ you said with a smirk. ‘But you know i have aaaaaaaall the luck.’

‘We’ll see about that.’

And with that, she flipped the coin up in the air, and it seemed like it took forever for it to hit the ground. The coin bounced twice and then landed flat.

Scratch.

‘Very well then.’ She said, kicking your dice hard enough they landed somewhere far behind you. ‘You may go.’

Now for the real gamble.

You smirked widely as you turned, holding up your hand as if to half-heartedly wave, and began to take your first step. You were certain she was going to kill you, you saw her move up her sword. But about a second had passed and you began to feel relief flood through you as you placed your foot back on the ground to begin you second stride.

But just as you thought you were safe, a sharp pain ran through your back and you gasp. Then, just as quick as you were stabbed, the blade was withdrawn.

You placed a hand to your wound and collapsed to the ground. You landed face down with your arms in front of you.

And that brings you to where you are now.

Lying on the ground and waiting to die.

You hear a sound like sobbing coming from behind you somewhere. She’s still there.

You had expected to die sooner after being fucking stabbed, but hey, no complaints on your end. Though the wounds hurts like a bitch.

After a few minutes have passed, you are surprisingly still alive. That it, you’re gonna make it, no one can kill the great Vriska Serket, you just have to wait for Terezi to stop crying and leave, then you can patch your wound, stop the bleeding and get some better medical help. However, you do find it kind of touching that she’d mourn for you, you knew she wouldn’t be able to just kill you and think nothing of it, but you hadn’t expected her to have a full-on breakdown.

As the minutes draw by, you lose track of time. Everything has just slowly become a blur to you. You can’t even tell if Terezi is still there or not. You lazily move your head ever so slightly and notice a massive patch of cobalt blue pooling around you.

Blood loss. Fuck.

Maybe you should have at least tried to do something about that before you started feigning dead.

You don’t particularly care anymore though, well, enough to move and do something about it at least.

You think to yourself “fuck” and you hear a strangely loud sobbing around you somewhere that sounds oddly unlike Terezi as you finally slowly slip out of consciousness.

Elsewhere:

Your name is Feferi Peixes and you are the sole Heiress to the entire Alternian Empire which you absolutely adore. Your empire will be the greatest to ever exist!

END PART TWO

Chapter 53

Chapter Text

We are the wealth, the scholars, the leaders,
we are the storm and we are the fight
we feel the royalty that runs through our blood
we live for the ocean and die for the light
we suffer for no one
and scarcely do right
but if we leave behind our demons,
and follow our ghosts instead,
We might just achieve our freedom
and save our own heads.

Take my hand, we’ll run on three.

You throw down your robot parts in a huff, due to the force you unintentionally apply, they dent in several places as they hit your respiteblock floor. You storm out of your respiteblock, accidentially slamming your door behind you, your anger increasing with each little thing that goes wrong. You storm down the stairs and into your kitchen in search of your lusus, Authour, only to find he isn’t there.

After storming around your hive for ten minutes at least and accidentally breaking several things, you decide to give up on your search and return to your respiteblock, slamming the door once again.

All you ever wanted was a glass of milk.

After kicking around some spare robot parts for around another ten minutes, there is a knock at your door as your lusus lets himself in, but before he can get the door open more than halfway, you have thrown one of your robotic limbs in his direction with almost all of your strength. Frightened, he runs away. For another ten minutes or so, you storm around your respiteblock some more, still fuming, and break up a few more of your half-completed robots.

Then you shamefully walk down through your hive in search of Authour to apologise.

You then head back to your block and, now much more calm, get back to your robotics. You haven’t fully completed a robot in about a sweep, usually your temper gets the better of you. Once upon a time, you were the best in your caste in robotics, possibly the best out of many castes in Alternia, but lately that is not the case.

In the last sweep of so, you have dedicated your life to your work in robotics, your schoolfeeding, and fulfilling your duty as a blue blood to the empire. You will complete your schoolfeeding, and then go off-world to partake in more training in the mechanics field. You may even end up repairing ships from the imperial fleet itself.

You will live out your life, doing as you are told and fulfilling your duty to the empire.

You accidentally slip while holding one of the parts you are working on and partially crush it. With your rage now refuelled, you throw it as hard as you can at the nearest wall, almost completely destroying the piece and denting your wall.

Your name is EQUIUS ZAHHAK and you’ve had troubles with your anger ever since your moirail was taken away from you.

Chapter 54

Chapter Text

Your husktop is making all kinds of weird-ass mother fuckin noises at you and you don’t even fucking know what is up with that. Like, whoa, its beeping and flashing all these motherfucking miraculous colours at you. You think somebody might be trying to message you, but you take the time to sit and all up and appreciate this weird ass shit.

After you don’t even know how motherfucking long, you decide to actually answer the message.

Well if it isn’t your blue blooded mother fucking friend all up and trying to get his messaging on with you. You love that blue blooded mother fucker.

It looks to you like the mother fucker is all up and trying to tell you to remember to do your fucking homework. But why would a mother fucker need his fucking homework when he can all up and enjoy his faygo and his sopor pie?

You let that mother fucker know that, like the good mother fucking friend you are. He tells you that’s bullshit, but uh, not in those words. This blue blooded mother fucker doesn’t like to be all up and mother fucking cussing. Which is all mother fucking fine with you, a mother fucker’s gotta up and follow what his heart be telling him, and if his heart be saying no mother fucking cussing, then you all up and mother fucking quit your cussing. He also doesn’t like your motherfucking cussing but you just gotta fucking roll with it y’know?

He tells you you should be all up and being the superior one, taking your mother fucking responsibility and doing fucking responsible shit, but you tell him you like being the way that you mother fucking are.

He’s now all kindly asking you if you would all up and act your mother fucking caste, to him you simply say nah bro.

You got better things to be doing than all that mother fucking indigo shit.

Like all up and mother fucking appreciating this fucking miraculous sopor pie.

Your name is GAMZEE MAKARA and you mother fucking love this fine ass world you live in.

Chapter 55

Chapter Text

Ugh, you fucking hate these meetings.

All you do is sit at a huge fuckin’ table and listen to the adults go on and fuckin’ on about how they should run the fuckin’ empire. We need to change this, we need to change that! But meeting after meeting everything stays the fucking same.

You used to try and sit there on your phone, until you got told off for it, told you were supposed to be listening and paying attention. Screw that, you don’t give a shit about them. Who cares about the fuckin’ empire, you put the slaves in one place, the workers in another and get a new planet for everyone else. Problem fuckin’ solved. Though if it were up to you, all of the fuckin’ landwellers would be slaves, it’d sure make all the seadwellers filthy rich and you wouldn’t have a problem with anyone.

You lean on the table, with your head rested on one hand and the other arm stretched out and your fingers tapping on the table. You aren’t even looking at whoever’s talking. You aren’t even listening. You have to go to these meetings every week and sometimes even twice or three times a week, depending on when they’re called, and you can’t skip a single meeting because one day you’re going to have to run the fuckin’ thing. The meeting is run by the Imperial counsel, and the meetings determine what will happen in the empire and where.

Basically, the counsel does whatever the Condesce doesn’t want to.

The only plus side to these meetings is, because of how many you used to skip, after each one, you are promised a visit to your moirail. Which means, the second the meeting comes to a close, you are running out of the door and demanding to be taken to her.

Suddenly, without warning, the door bursts open and a landweller just lets himself in.

Shit, this is the best thing that’s happened all day.

If you interrupt the counsel whilst in session, you will be reprimanded, maybe banned from the Imperial Palace of Alternia.

However if a landweller interrupts the counsel, it is punishable by death. No trial, no excuses, just culled on the spot. You force yourself to hold back on a grin as you slowly begin to reach for your ahabs crosshairs resting on the floor beside you.

‘Ah, you have the papers, thank you.’ Says the troll currently speaking. Another troll stands and collects the papers from the troll. ‘You may leave now.’ He says. The landweller scum bows and leaves without a word.

You settle back into your seat, in a much, much fouler mood than before.

Your name is ERIDAN AMPORA and you don’t give a shit about the fuckin’ empire, you just want to spend time with your moirail.

Chapter 56

Chapter Text

Glub glub! Tonight has just been so EXCITING!

You spent a few hours culling a small octopus and playing around with it for a while, and then one of your attendants brought you a pair of cuttlefish! SO MANY CEPHALOPODS FOR YOU TO CULL!!

Also, you definition of “culling” is different to that of the rest of the empire, where they would use the word in place of “killing” you use it in place of “caring for the unfit and infirm”. You absolutely adore culling all the creatures you find out in the sea! Or rather, the creatures brought to you from the sea. You are aware of the fact that most of the creatures you cull and care for aren’t in need of any actual help, but you still find it a lot of fun!

After spending probably half of the night playing with and culling your little friends, you decide to get on your husktop and see if your moirail is online. After waiting a few minutes to see if he does, you decide that the glubbing doofish isn’t going to sign on anytime soon and you decide to connect up with a random troll! You spend about an hour trolling that troll! And buoy, are you good at trolling!

When you end the chat, you aren’t quite sure what to do next, so you decide to swim around aimlessly for a bit, and end up staring through the top of your HUGE glass dome, trying to see if you can see the surface tonight. And nope, no luck again. You swim back down to the floor and pick up a crab scuttling along there. You almost didn’t see him, since he was scuttling along on part of the glass floor, and not on your nice long rug! You pick him up and sit down and are about to start playing around with him when your door bursts open and your moirail comes bursting in.

‘ERI-FIN!!’ you yell as he storms across to you on your nice fuchsia rug. You know he’s grumpy if he’s walking, he does it because he can’t stomp if he’s swimming.

‘Fef, you know I glubbing hate it when you call me that.’ he says, looking very irritated, but that’s nothing unusual.

‘And what if I don’t like I when you call me Fef?’ you say with a little glub-laugh as you see his eyebrow twitch. OH MY GLUB ONE OF HIS FINS TWITCHED TOO!

‘Ha ha, glub, what’s gotten you in such a crabby mood?’

‘Ugh, nofin, just don’t glubbing worry about it.’ He says with a sniff as he pushes his thick glasses up his nose a little more.

‘Awww, come here!’ you say, still sitting as you extend your arms towards him.

‘I’m not fuckin getting on the floor Fef.’ He says with a scowl.

‘Why not? It’s not like its dirty or anyfin!’ he glares at you and you give in. with a sigh, you set down the crab and go over to your big chest and open it to pull out dozens of little fake cuttlefish and drop them all in a big pile on your glass floor.

‘How aboat over here?’ he glares a little more but then moves towards you.

You flop down onto the pile and ready yourself for a nice long feelings jam.

Your name is FEFERI PEIXES and you are heir apparent to the throne of the ALTERNIAN EMPIRE which you absolutely ADORE!! It is the largest, kindest and most JUST EMPIRE IN THE UNIVERSE!!

Chapter 57

Chapter Text

Your latest projects have resulted in you rarely leaving the hive as of late. On top of all the complex processes of designing, building and programming your latest robot, you have a lot of studies you need to catch up on. The empire may not demand anything outstanding from you career-wise, however it is compulsory for you to complete at least seven sweeps of schoolfeeding at an exceptionally high level.

After a whole night dedicated to a catch-up on your studies, you make your way into your recoupercoon well after sunrise. You take off your glasses, carefully, so to not break them, and carelessly drop them outside your recoupercoon. You settle down into the sopor and relax into its cool and soothing embrace.

Most days, the sopor prevents you from having the awful daymares your race is plagued with. Most days, it prevents you from dreaming at all.

Today however, is not one of those days.

It started off as a normal dream, just fragments of a memory, but then everything went bad.

Back when you were just a wriggler, about three sweeps old, all the wrigglers of your caste actually had a school to go to. Children left to learn by themselves will often go off to play instead, so all the highblood wrigglers were sent to be schoolfed by professionals.

A wriggler once had a tantrum about having to be schoolfed, and obey the empire constantly, and was threatening treason against her Imperious Condescension. Being a three-sweep-old blue-blood, his threats were of course, considered empty. However, it was feared he would pass his opinions and nonsense on to the other wrigglers, and they would grow to believe in disobeying and causing harm to the empire, so a string of excursions were arranged.

The class as a whole travelled through many olive blood towns, and much about the hemospectrum was explained.

Finally, the trip ended by spending the night taking a class and a tour of the facilities through a rust-blood mining camp. You were all told t be grateful of your position on the hemospectrum, and to always obey the empire and those of a higher caste, or else you may find yourself in a camp like this.

Since then, none of your classmates ever spoke a word against the empire.

Though the memory featured in this dream took place on the night at the mining camp, not in the classes after.

You remember your lusus had to attend with you, being unsafe to take wrigglers unattended into a place full of rust blooded savages. You were always told that while during the night it was safe in the facilities as they were all out at work, you were not to approach the fence.

But you got lost.

You had decided to sneak off for a fraction of a second and you then got lost.

Your memories of that day are foggy but somehow, you ended up outside.

And that is where your dream began.

You opened the door and walked out into the moonlight, the smell of hot sand and humid air filled your nose and the warm breeze hit your face.

You took a look at the fence, seeing something quite a while away behind it, you assumed it to be a guard, so you walked on, deciding that your lusus would find you soon enough, and that nothing harmful could be found on this side of the fence.

You looked out onto the dessert as you walked. You had all been taken there in many large cars as there were no roads out there, so if any rustbloods escaped, rather than facing execution as punishment for their treason, they would die in the desert. The trip took a few hours at high speed but with the air conditioner and the comfy seats it was quite a pleasant drive.

You heard the clang of a wire fence being moved and turned quickly, startled by the sudden sound the find the figure had moved its way towards you. A young girl wrestled her way through a tiny hole in the fencing and was now straightening her tattered and grimy clothes.

The girl was a rust blood. You could clearly see that from the symbol on her shirt.

‘You aren’t supposed to be out here.’ You said, hoping that the savage rust bloods could at least speak.

‘Neither are you.’ Was all she responded with, quite clearly, as opposed to the illiterate murmurings you were expecting. And you certainly hadn’t expected her to respond like that! How rude! To speak back to someone of a higher caste like that!

‘Go back to work!’ you said to her, annoyed by her impudence. She did not respond, instead, she finished inspecting a new hole in her skirt and continued on her merry way as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

‘Where are you going?!’ you called to her, raising your voice a little.

‘That way.’ You called back, lifting her hand and pointing to the area in front of her. You followed, tripping in the deep soft sand occasionally, whereas she appeared to have no problem with it. She walked tall and with the posture and grace of a royal, the façade was ruined only by the tattered clothes and the stomping through the sand.

She made her way up to a shed, which was locked as it appeared from her tugging on the handle. She began to press against some of the glass panels on the window until one came loose, she then reached through it and pulled the door open from the inside. She made her way in, you however, did not follow. You wanted nothing to do with whatever treachery she was getting up to in there. However, less than a minute later, she returned, arms full of bandages and various pills.

‘What do you want them for?’ you asked as she lifted up the hem of her shirt and began to wrap the bandages around her waist.

‘My friend is sick.’ she said, not sounding any less cheerful.

‘Your friend is a rust blood?’ you asked as she tied the bandage off and began on the second.

‘Yes.’

‘Then why bother helping him?’ She stared at you intently while she ties up the bandage, not even paying attention to it, which you remember really freaked you out at the time. When she was done, she checked the panel had been replaced and closed the door before stuffing the packets of pills under the bandages and pulling down her shirt to hide it all.

‘If you really care about someone, their caste shouldn’t matter.’

You stopped for a moment as she began to walk away, before tripping over your own feet in an attempt to catch up with her.

You rained down about a hundred questions on her before she got back to the hole in the fence.

‘Okay, Bye now.’ She said as she began to pull herself through the hole in the wire.

‘Wait, can’t you stay just a little longer?’ you asked

‘Nope!’

‘Why not?’ she stops halfway through the fence and gives you a massive grin.

‘Because I’ll get shot at.’ And how she continued grinning there again, freaked you out. She was quite a pretty little girl for a rust blood though. Such a huge smile too.

And then something happened that, even while dreaming, you knew shouldn’t have. Something that wasn’t a part of your memories.

The scene changed, faded out completely to black, but she stayed there, smiling a little more sweetly, and she had aged too, she was about six or seven sweeps old, a lot closer to your current age. She had grown into an amazingly beautiful young girl. She ran a hand through her long and gorgeous hair and with a slight giggle to her voice, she said “Equius!” She looked so happy to see you and you wanted to talk to her. You took a step forward but the second your foot hit the ground there was a bright white flash from her body and suddenly she was dead. Still standing, but her eyes were white as bone and her face contorted into an expression of pure agony, her hands rigid in front of her as if she had tried to defend herself from whatever had happened and her blood, dripped from all over her body, she had cuts and bruises all over her body and some very deep gashes to her torso.

Filled with fear, you took a step back. She was screaming, but you couldn’t hear her, though you just knew that she was screaming.

The scene flashed repeatedly, going from her being dead to what appeared to be a robot lookalike of herself, emotionless and cold, until all you could see was her dead face screaming, just inches from your own.

She kept changing, flashing though until a new image began to mix with the flashes, it appeared to be a giant read cogwheel with a figure dressed in red hovering in the middle of it. The images kept flicking by, until the figure burst forth, holding two smaller, thinner red cogwheels in her hands. You realised it was her as she leapt toward you and used the cogwheels to slice off your head.

Everything was dark for a minute, until you saw her dead again, standing far away from you, but this time, she was a little girl again.

Dead as that sweet, cute little girl who never harmed anyone. Eyes white and blood oozing from the horrendously deep gashes all across her body.

She tilted her head to the side a little, and said voice and body shaking with a smile;

“Hi Equius, my name’s Aradia.”

You woke, eyes flicking open quickly, breathing heavily, and sweating cold into the sopor surrounding you. Still half panicked, you grabbed the opening of your recoupercoon and pulled yourself out, only to step on your glasses, getting the pieces stuck in your foot as you begin to bleed on the floor.

You have to fight back panicked tears because for a second there, you could have sworn that your blue blood was a deep dark red.

Chapter 58

Chapter Text

You are about two inches from telling EVERYONE to fuck off.

You did NOT intend on still being here right now, you did NOT want to be up this late during the day and you most certainly did NOT want to get your ass hauled into another one of those shitty meetings. That’s the third one in three days. You have spent a total of sixteen hours in these fucking stupid meetings in the last three days.

When you get home, you are going straight to your recoupercoon and not coming out for at least three nights. No less. No one is going to fucking disturb you or you will shoot them in the head regardless of who they are. Except Fef. But if Fef actually came into your hive it’d be a fucking miracle. You don’t think she’s left that little glass bubble in sweeps. You wish she’d be allowed out for once, even just for a little bit. She could come stay with you in your hive and the two of you could go swimming for days on end.

You know how much she loves swimming in the open ocean. Even if she’s never really done it before.

Sometimes, you just wish she wasn’t the heiress.

Even though, her blood is at the top of the hemospectrum and she’s the second most powerful troll in the universe, sometimes, you wish she wasn’t. Though you find it hard to imagine her with another blood colour, fuchsia just suits her so well. Imagine her as a violet blood, it just doesn’t seem to fit, the colour is too dark, she needs bright colours. You think for a moment, and imagine her with a deep red colour, which was probably closer to fuchsia than purple. Wait no, dear god no, you did not just imagine Fef as a rust blood. It’s bad enough to think of her in a different caste let alone a landwelling lowblood scum.

You mentally slap yourself.

You just reach the main hall of the palace, about two metres from the door, when your fuckin phone rings.

And it’s the fuckin grand advisor.

‘What!?’ you half yell, pissed off that you’re probably going to be called back into another meeting.

‘Can you come back to the central briefing room? We have a task for you.’

‘What? It can’t even fuckin’ wait till tomorrow?!’

‘Afraid not Ampora. You gotta do this for us.’ You let out a very loud “ugh”

‘How about no?’

‘It involves killing lowbloods.’

‘…okay, two minutes, I’ll be right there.’

And quick as a flash, you turn your sorry ass around because god, being told you get to go culling some fuckin’ lowblood landwelling scum is the best news you’ve had all week.

Chapter 59

Chapter Text

It’s daybreak according to your clock, and time to get some rest! You put all your little cuttlefish plushies back into their box and shoo all of your various little sea creatures back into their cages for the day before making your way to your recoupercoon. You swim straight in, head first and almost dive slowly into the sopor. You curl up and get comfy. The lights start to dim and you relax, thinking about everything that happened tonight. You were brought an octopus with a cut in one of its tentacles! It’d been a long time since you’ve had to ‘cull’ something that actually needed help.

You slowly drift off to sleep.

You expect your typical dreamless sleep, but that’s not what happens.

It’s fuzzy and weird, and kind of out-of-body like you would expect a dream to be, everything around you was dark, you couldn’t see anything, but you could definitely hear something. At first it was fuzzy, you thought it may have been a voice. As the sound became more defined, you could tell that it definitely was a voice, saying something, quietly, the same thing over and over again.

“We need more time, we need more time, we need more time, more time, we need more time, we need more time”

Over and over, the voice wouldn’t stop.

Then she began to appear in front of you.

She was facing to the side, just turned away enough so that you couldn’t see her face. She was dressed in all red.

‘Who are you?’ you ask, your voice echoes around the nothingness, but she continues to say the same sentence over and over again. You begin to step towards her, quickening your pace as you walk further and further.

You keep walking, but she doesn’t get any closer.

You break into a run, but the distance between you still refuses to close.

‘We need more time, we need more time, we need more time’

‘What do you need time for? Who else are you talking about?’ you call, but are answered only by same repeated sentence. She begins to fade and you run faster. ‘Wait! Why do you need more time?’

And she disappears.

Your eyelids flick open, but you don’t move.

Suddenly wide awake in the middle of the day.

You don’t get another second of sleep until nightfall, when the lights turn up and wake you again anyway.

Chapter 60

Chapter Text

‘You’re fuckin’ kiddin’ me.’

‘Sorry Ampora, but that’s it. Take it or leave it.’ The advisor puts his hands on his hips and looks down at you, a little apologetically. Turns out, they don’t even have lowbloods here for you to cull. You have to go out and hunt them down yourself. Fuck that.

‘Uh, I’ll say leave it.’

‘Sorry again Ampora, but you don’t have a choice. Orders from the superiors.’ You eye him suspiciously. This was the most powerful troll on the planet, he takes orders from no one.

‘You don’t have superiors.’

‘I have one.’ A slight smirk appears on his face, whether it was intended to be malicious or not, you aren’t sure. You slump and almost roll your eyes.

‘Are you serious?’

‘’fraid so.’

‘Ugh.’ You roll your eyes and fold your arms. You look over at the wall to your right. You are pissed off, but there’s nothing you can do about it. ‘How many?’

‘Three, possibly four. Here’s the catch though, you can’t kill one of ‘em.’

‘Why?’

‘Empress’s orders. You should be gone a couple weeks, not even our best trackers have found ‘em yet.’ You stay as you are and think for a moment.

‘What about Fef?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Fef, Feferi, the heiress, my moirail. What about her?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well am I supposed to just ditch her for a few weeks, is that it?’

‘Well, you can explain where you’re going.’

‘Uh, no, no I fuckin’ can’t, not unless you want your little façade about the empire being the nicest fuckin’ thing in the universe to end. I am not going to be the one to tell her her whole life is a fuckin’ lie.’ He looks straight at you, almost expressionless for a moment, completely silent.

‘You’re her moirail.’

‘Yeah but it’s your fuckin’ lie.’ He holds the same expression.

‘You’ve lied to her the most.’

You snap your head towards him, glaring at him with as much ferocity as you could possibly muster. You are two inches away from telling him to go fuck himself and his little quest, you want to scream at him and tell him it’s all his fault and you were forced to go along with all the bullshit, but you know the repercussions of doing something like that would put you into serious trouble.

You turn out the door and head home. Right now, more than anything you need your moirail.

Too bad your moirail’s situation has been too fucked up for you to talk to her about something like this.

You go home to an empty hive, planning on going straight to your recoupercoon and never coming out when you find a message painted all across one of the wall in your shipwreck hive in a dark red paint.

“Don’t you dare touch him or I swear I will kill you.”

You stumbled around in shock, looking around to find whoever had written the message. Someone must be in your hive.

On the wall opposite the message, in the same colour is written “time” over and over again.

A closer inspection told you that the words were written in blood.

You searched your hive top to bottom, the place was clear. Even SeahorseDad seemed to remain oblivious to the intrusion.

Chapter 61

Chapter Text

You’ve been plagued by these horrid daymares for nights. Each day when you go to sleep, you wake up, in the middle of the day, unable to go back to sleep out of fear. You’ve never been one to be particularly afraid of anything, but these daymares have you scared to death.

Your lusus continuously pesters you, trying to make you’re okay, that you’re not sick and that you’re drinking enough milk, and you’ve begun to snap at him a lot more than usual.

Last night, you didn’t dream about the same girl, you dreamt about someone else.

And that dream scared you probably twice as much.

“ac carefurly stalks her prey, trying her very hardest not to make a sound and scare the wild hoof beast off”

“Nepeta, not now.”

“She grins as she appurroaches, she appears to have gone completely unnoticed! The hoof beast does not suspect a thing!”

“Nepeta, I’m busy.”

“But who is the hoof beast talking to? Certainly not ac! Her purrfect stalking skills keep her pawsitively hidden from sight!”

“NEPETA.”

“Okay, jeez, fiiiiine.” She rolls her eyes dramatically before moving behind where you sit and throwing herself over you, so that she was propped up by your back and leaning on your shoulders. You let out a small sigh.

“Watcha making this time?”

“A robot.”

“But you’re always making robots, what does this one do?”

“It fights.”

“Ohhhhh, so this is another one of your robots you break when you have temper tantrums, I SEE!’ She threw her hands and chin onto the top of your head, quite violently, on the word ‘see’ and just rested herself on your head. She sat there and watched you for probably ten minutes before she spoke again.

“You know, when you’re angry… you could just talk to me.”

You stopped work for a moment before you put down your tools and parts and reached behind you to grab onto her and pull her up in the air and over your head. You were very strong for your age, able to lift her completely up above you. She was very strong too, But not quite as strong as you were, though she was more than capable of knocking you over. You sat her in your lap so that her side pressed against your chest and you held your arms around her. She snuggled into you and wrapped her arms around your head.

The two of you stayed like that for a few moments before she started making these ridiculous noises.

“Nepeta, what are you doing?”

“I’m purring!” you let out a deep breath.

“Trolls don’t purr Nepeta.”

“Well I do!” she insisted, though she did so cheerfully. “You could to if you wanted!”

“I don’t think so Nepeta.” Her response was blowing a raspberry at you while fixing up her gloves.

After a while she began swaying back and forth in your arms, singing alone to some song you don’t know.

You weren’t sure when, but at some point everything had faded away into darkness and it was just you and her standing amongst the nothingness. She held up two fingers on each hand and pressed the tips together to form a diamond with her fingers. Slowly she formed a fist and brought it up to her face. You did the same. Each of you placed a kiss on your knuckles and then held out two fingers to each other, the tips touching to form a diamond between you. She smiled at you, and you, for a second, smiled back at her too.

But then the darkness faded into a bright scene, one that you remembered all too well; Daybreak.

The day your moirail was taken from you forever.

You were held back by about four trolls and they were only just able to keep you there. “YOU SAID I’D STILL BE ABLE TO SEE HER! YOU DIDN’T SAY YOU’D TAKE HER AWAY! GIVE HER BACK! GIVE MY MOIRAIL BACK!” all the while Nepeta was being dragged away from you by a bunch of other trolls, screaming out to you. You saw the fear in her eyes, the fear and the greif. This was the last time you’d see each other and that terrified both of you.

You didn’t even get to say goodbye.

The last time you saw her she was screaming and filled with fear.

You wake, both crying and panicking, disoriented and detached from reality. You pull yourself out of your recoupercoon and fall to the floor. You grab onto the opening, about to pull yourself up when you notice a pair of feet beside you. You look up into the glowing yellow eyes of a troll dressed in red. It was that girl, the one you remember and the one from your dreams.

‘It’s time Equius. Hurry.’

And suddenly she was gone, quick as you would blink, as if she wasn’t there to begin with.

Your imagination.

But thanks to her appearance, you aren’t entirely sure you feel safe in your house anymore.

Chapter 62

Chapter Text

You keep having these dreams. You don’t understand them, but they feel so real to you. Like you are actually there, trying to talk to this girl.

She always has her back to you, you never see her face, only her odd red clothes and her long curly hair. And no matter how hard you try, you can never get close enough to her to touch her. Each Day when you dream of her, you manage to get just that little bit closer. After a few days though, you managed to get her to answer some of your questions.

‘…we need more time, we need more time, we need more time, we need more…’

‘Why do you need more time? What are you in such a hurry to do?’ you yelled to her. She abruptly stopped her consistent chanting for a few moments and the two of you were standing in silence.

‘I need more time… to save them.’

‘Save who? Is somebody hurt? Is someone in danger?’

‘Someone is always in danger on this wretched planet.’

‘Yeah, I know that no matter what you do, somebody will always be in trouble somewhere, but who? Is it somebody you know?’

‘You can help them Feferi. If only you could help us all.’

And then she faded away and you woke up gasping.

Each night your conversations have been improving, eventually, she stopped talking so much about these endangered friends of hers, but whenever she did, you were sure to drop the fish puns to show you were serious and you cared. Even if she isn’t real it still can’t hurt to make sure you’re polite! Each night, you get a little closer, but still you can’t get close enough to see her face.

She won’t turn to look at you either.

‘So who are you? What is your name?’

‘That is not for you to know.’

‘But I want to help you!’

‘How could you possibly help me?’

‘I could find out what’s wrong and send someone to go save your friend!’

‘Oh Feferi, Feferi Peixes, the supposed “Heiress”, trapped in your bubble of lies, what are you going to do when the Condesce comes calling?’

You woke suddenly, filled with dread. What had she meant? You always knew the Condesce would come one day and the two of you would “fight” for the throne, as by ancient tradition, but you always thought that perhaps you could reason with her, simply give up the throne until she decided to pass it on to you. It shouldn’t be a problem, the Empress of such a wonderful Empire must be so reasonable and lovely, you are sure.

The girl from your dreams doesn’t seem to think that though.

‘If you do not leave, you will be destroyed.’

‘That’s nonsense! The Condesce would never krill me!’

‘That may be what you are led to believe.’

‘You always say weird stuff like that! It makes no sense!’

‘To you.’

‘Ugh, you can be so frustrating, you know that?’ she went back to her chanting.

‘We need more time, we need more time…’

‘Come on, you haven’t told me anyfin about yourself or whoever it is who’s in trouble!’ you are a very patient troll, but after about a perigee of dreaming of this girl and not knowing anything about her, you are beginning to get very frustrated. Deciding you’ve had enough, you try to storm straight up to her. This time, you touch her. You grab her shoulder. ‘Just let me help you!’ you pull her shoulder back and turn her to face you.

You nearly jump back. You pull your hands away quickly and hold them over your mouth in shock.

Her eyes are white.

‘It’s far too late for you to help me, Feferi.’

She has the face of a dead girl.

Chapter 63

Chapter Text

‘Stop making excuses, Ampora.’

‘But I’m not even fuckin’ kiddin’ it actually happened! I swear on my lusus!’

‘Eridan, one day, you’re going to kick me out of my position, remember? And I don’t want the second most powerful position in the fucking universe to be taken up by a whiny, lazy brat.’

‘Hey-’

‘And neither does Her Imperious Condescension, that’s why she’s sending you on this job.’

‘But my hive got fuckin’ broken in to!’

‘You live in the middle of the ocean and you are claiming that a land dweller broke into your hive. Think about what you’re saying for a minute.’

‘But I’m serious-’

‘So am I. Get. Your ass. Going.’

‘Fine but what about Fef-’

‘For god’s sake Eridan, nobody cares about your moirail problems.’ You could see him really starting to get pissed off now.

‘Eridan, she’s not going to last much longer anyway, you need to understand that.’

‘What? What do you mean?’

‘Kid, she’s the descendant of the Empress, who doesn’t happen to be a very caring troll. All she cares about, is expanding the Empire, and staying in command. Now, bring little Feferi into the equation, a potentially just as powerful troll, more than capable of taking over the Empire, add two and two together, Eridan. The Empress isn’t going to let her live much longer. Chances are, by the time you get back from your job and bring back that psionic, the Empress will have been and gone and Feferi will be long dead.’

You can do nothing but stare at him in horror.

‘You- that- that’s fucking treason you’re speakin’ there! You can’t talk about the empress or the heiress like that! I should have you fuckin culled-’

‘Eridan, that’s just how it is, now go home.’

‘No, fuck you I-’

‘ERIDAN.’

Fuming, you turn on your heel and storm back to your hive.

Once there, you leave a note to your lusus and grab a bag full of your things and head straight back to the Imperial palace.

It’s time Fef knew what was really going on in her precious, perfect empire.

Chapter 64

Chapter Text

You really did not want to come here, but there really was not another option.

The only other troll who lived even close to you was that Cerulean blood, and not only are you fairly certain that she was, for want of a better word, crazy, but you are also fairly certain you saw her leave a few days ago and you were yet to see any signs of her return.

You walk through a hive that stinks of something you can’t quite place. There are clothes and empty pie tins and all sorts of other things littering the floors. The entire place was filthy, and there wasn’t a single trace of this troll’s lusus. You follow the indigo blood to his respiteblock without a word. His respiteblock alone is about four times worse than the rest of his hive put together. It is absolutely repulsive. You really think you will be leaving in the morning.

He turns to face you and invites you to “get your chill on” before grabbing a half empty bottle of faygo and making his way to his computer desk.

You find a relatively clean patch of floor, take a seat and withdraw your husktop from the bag you brought with you.

You load it up and the first thing you see is that Vriska is still not online. She usually is, she never logs off or switches off her husktop, which must mean she still has not returned to her hive. You wonder briefly if something had happened to her, but brush the thought aside. She may be foolish, but she can get herself out of trouble.

You open up your internet browser and are greeted with many news stories of whatever has been happening on this planet recently. You take the time to take a quick look at them all, as its not like you have anything in particular to be doing, just wasting time until dawn so you can sleep and get out of here. You see a story about some famous troll on another planet and something about the Condesce returning for something before you see something that catches your eye. A mass culling on a city inhabited by mostly olive bloods. You think that at least some of the lower blooded filth are being properly dealt with.

Wait, no.

She was an Olive blood, wasn’t she?

You mentally scold yourself for thinking such things.

Before you can continue, your trollian icon begins flashing at the bottom of your screen.

-- terminallyCapricious [TC] began trolling centaursTesticle [CT] at 02:14 –

TC: hOnK :o)

‘Gamzee, we are in the same room.’ You say, slightly annoyed and already over his nonsense.

TC: sO wHaT mOtHeRfUcKeR?

TC: dOnT mAtTeR wHeRe A mOtHeRfUcKeR iS hE sTiLl GoTtA bE uP aNd FoLlOwInG wHeRe HiS hEaRtS aT

TC: :o)

You decide to humour his nonsense and reply through trollian.

CT: what is it you want, Gamzee?

TC: jUsT tO uP aNd TaLk To AnOtHeR mOtHeRfUcKeR :o)

CT: very well.

TC: I KnOw My HoRsE bRo MoThEr FuCkErS bEeN hAvInG sOmE hArD tImEs LaTeLy

CT:and how would you know that?

TC: aInT nO WaY yOu WoUlD hAvE aLl Up AnD mOtHeRfUcKiN cOmE tO mE oThErWiSe :o)

CT: uh, I guess, you would be right.

TC: rEmEmBeR iM hErE fOr YoU bRo

CT: uh, thank you, high blood.

Your trollian icon begins to flicker again. You have received a message from another sender.

CT: please e%cuse me, I must answer another message.

TC: tAkE yOuR tImE bRo :o)

You minimize the chat window and open the new one.

Your blood-pusher stops for a moment as a familiar coloured text appears on the screen.

-- apocolypseArisen [AA] began trolling centaursTesticle [CT] at 02:20 --

AA: I kn0w you are afraid

AA: there is n0thing t0 fear.

AA: but y0u must hurry!

AA: hurry, equius, please find them. They need y0ur help.

AA: and s0 d0 i.

You nearly jump out of your skin when your trollian beeps again.

TC: iTs AlL oKaY bRo :o)

CT: e%cuse me?

You momentarily forgot your conversation with Gamzee.

TC: I kNoW eXaCtLy HoW yOuRe MoThEr FuCkIn FeElIn :o(

CT: Gamzee,

TC: I kNoW bEcAuSe

His voice startles you.

‘She’s been trollin’ me too.’

Chapter 65

Chapter Text

UGH, he is just so IMMATURE and STUPID!!

You are too mad to even think of any fish puns to use as insults!

He is literally, the biggest asshole you have ever met!!

Not that you’ve met a lot of assholes, or trolls at all really. But that’s not the point!

How the GLUB did he think he could get away with trying to pull a stunt like this?!

You lie on your stomach behind him on the plushie pile. You play with his hair as you listen to him talk, making it stand up on all ends and tidying up the little purple streak.

‘Fef, I gotta tell you something.’

You pull yourself forward and plonk your head down unceremoniously onto the top of his head. You lift your hands to his face and begin to trace your fingers along his jawline.

‘What is it, Eri-fin?’

‘You’re not gonna like it.’

You lift up on hand and boop him on the nose with one slender finger. ‘Try me!’

He sits for a few seconds in silence, as if he were thinking very carefully about what to say. His jaw twitched twice before he took a deep breath and let out a sigh.

‘You’re being lied to.’

You freeze for a second, before moving your hands back to his jaw.

‘By who?’

He hesitates again, and for a second, you think you feel him tremble.

‘Everyone.’ His voice hitches a little. ‘Including me.’

You pull your hands back from his face and sit up.

‘What do you mean?’ he stays as he is, without a movement or a word.

‘Eridan, tell me.’

He takes another breath before sitting up and turning around. He doesn’t look you in the eye, but down at the pile.

‘Everything anyone has ever told you about the Empire has been a lie.’

You stare at him with confusion.

‘I- I don’t understand, what-’

‘It’s a lie. Your empire is not “kind” or “just” or any of the things you like to call it, it’s built on slaves, thousands of them, and workers who get paid shit all. And your precious Empress? She keeps you here. Yeah, it was her orders to keep you isolated and fuckin’ stupid so you would know what to do when she came to fuckin’ kill you.’ His voice broke up on his last few words.

‘Eridan! How could you say such things?!’ your face contorts with disgust as you stand.

‘Fef, I’m not lyin’, I swear! You need to know!’ he pleads as he scrambles to his feet.

‘What the shell?! What are you trying to accomplish? What is the point in making up these stories?!’

‘I-I’m not makin anything up I swear!’

‘Eridan, just, just go.’

‘But fef I-’

‘I’ll talk to you later, just please leave me alone.’ You take your feet off the ground and let yourself float and slowly drift up.

He doesn’t say a word, the only sign you have of him leaving is the door clicking shut.

You spend hours thinking over what he said before he left. You regret not yelling at him more before you kicked him out, and you regret yelling at him at all. You’re stuck in that place where you feel like you should believe him, but you don’t at the same time. He seemed so sincere, but you remember all the times he’s pulled stunts like this one. Though, nothing quite to this scale before.

But how could you ever believe something like that, opposed to what you’ve been taught your whole life? It’s just stupid.

But how could you believe anything about a world you’ve never seen?

But this isn’t the first time you’ve been told something like this either.

You think more for another hour or so.

-- cuttlefishCuller [CC] began pestering calligulasAquarium [CA] at 16:03 --

CC: -Eridan?

CC: please come back

CC: Im sorry

He never answers, but barely minutes later, your door bursts open and he comes flying through, twisting through the water and his cape floating straight over his head. You share an almost sad smile, and swim your way back down to him, ready to hear him out.

Chapter 66

Chapter Text

He had brought evidence with him in the form of sending a file of photographs of an old diary to your computer. It had belonged to his ancestor, he had claimed, and contained many various entries on his expeditions as imperial general as he travelled across the Alternian oceans. True, the text had implied some of the things that Eridan had said, but the diary must have been written a hundred sweeps ago. You had expressed these concerns to your moirail and he had told you to keep flicking through the images on your screen. After a few more images had flicked through, you noticed a difference in the pages. The pen colour was the same, but the handwriting had changed dramatically.

It was all scribbly and scrawly, like that of a two-sweep-olds. It was hard to read, but you picked up on a few badly misspelled words such as “seahorse” “landwellers” and “cull”. You flicked through about twenty more similar pages until you found an entry that was clearly more recent.

Landwwellin scum keep showin up at the palace. I have no fuckin clue how they get down there. Though they probably cant get back out. There are only a couple of rooms with actual air down there and they probably drown if they try to get out. Which means they’re trapped, and they’re slaves now. Which is good, because they should be. My plans to destroy em are nearly ready. Also my tutor don’t like the way I write things, so im gonna keep doin it like this on purpose so he gets pissed.

You looked up at him, confused.

‘I uh, I was about… oh probably only four then,’ He said as he tried to remember. ‘flick through to a later one.’

You did as you were told and flicked through to a page that had been dated to last sweep.

So much is goin’ wrong lately and I cant evven talk to my owwn fuckin moirail about it. I hate howw they lie to her and howw they make me lie too. Wwhy does she have to think her planet is safe and happy for evveryone? Why cant she just knoww? Wwhat difference wwould it evven make? Its just fuckin stupid. I hate it. I hate everyone here but her but if she evver found out I’d been lying to her she’d probably break up wwith me and nevver evven talk to me again.
I’d havve nothin left at all if she did.

These meetings go for so fuckin long i swear if I don’t get to cull a lowwblood im gonna stab someone. Well, someone who obvviously isn’t a lowwblood. That fuckin guy thinks hes so cool just cos he’s the fuckin imperial advisor but he doesn’t evven do shit. He just stands there and yaps at everyone all day he doesn’t even say anything. He doesn’t even notice I don’t pay attention half the time if he did I’d be in more trouble than I usually am. The asshole must be getting old if he cant even se-

The page ended there as the violet ink dragged itself across the page. You noticed a little note at the bottom of the page that read “he grabbed my fuckin book before I evven noticed him there and now im on cleanup duty for a fuckin week this shit fuckin sucks its not fair.” And you couldn’t help but let out a slight giggle.

But if this was really Eridan, how much had he been hiding from you? All this “kill the lowbloods” talk made you a little uneasy. But if he was right, and you were in danger there, it would be best to go with him, and the diary texts seemed to support his claims. A piece like that would have been easy to fake. Especially that he was only showing you photos of it. You weren’t sure if you could trust him after all this. It seems, you barely knew who he was.

But he was your moirail, and even if that was all you knew, it had to count for something.

You had agreed to go with him.

And that brought you to the current moment.

He opens the door and steps into the hall. For the first time in about a sweep, or maybe even longer, you step out of your little bubble room and follow him through the palace.

Escaping seemed almost a little too easy.

The open ocean was wonderful, you hadn’t seen it since you were about two sweeps old. It was just so huge you could have just kept swimming for miles on end without reaching its end. Eridan’s hive was also something you had not seen in a long time. The old ship was falling apart and appeared to be in dire need of reparation. Eridan had helped you up onto the rocks and you had taken your first breath of air since, well, probably since you were hatched.

Breathing air was actually a lot easier than breathing through the water. It came as quite a shock.

Eridan showed you into his hive and brought you the journal he had shown you pictures of. You read through a few small parts of it. Eridan got out his husktop and pulled up a news page, which also backed up his previous statements.

It was all true.

Your beautiful, wonderful empire, was really just a sanctuary for the highbloods, built on slavery and segregation.

In the end, it had become too much and you couldn’t help but start tearing up. Eridan wrapped his arms around you and shooshed you as he stroked your hair. You should have been mad at him. You should have been furious, but you could not bring yourself to feel a single shred of anger for the boy. True, he had been lying to you for many sweeps, but only because he had no other choice. And even though everything, he had still always tried his best to protect you.

You may not actually know him well at all, but at least you know you can trust him.

And now the two of you have to escape together; out of the sea and onto the land. You were, admittedly, afraid of what you would find upon your arrival on the shore, after all the things you’ve learnt in this past night, but after all, it would be your first time upon land, and that at least gave you a reason to be excited.

Perhaps, this wouldn’t be so bad if you looked at it as though it was just you and Eridan, going on your own little adventure.

Chapter 67

Chapter Text

No. No. Absolutely not. There is no way in the entire universe that you would go on some wild chase to find some imaginary girl from your dreams. It is just absolutely crazy. Gamzee however, thinks it is an amazing idea. As a matter of fact, he is already packed and ready to go. No matter how many time you ask him to just stay here, he still insists on going. Neither of you even know where to begin, or what direction you are even supposed to be heading in. He still insists, regardless. You don’t know how much longer you can deny a high blood’s orders. He keeps trying to leave, by grabbing his few items he stuffed into a backpack and casually walking out the door, only to return minutes, or even seconds later to see if you are following. You never are.

‘Gamzee please, stay inside the hive,’ you plead for what must have been the hundredth time tonight.

‘Aww but motherfucker, we gotta be off and findin’ this miss curly horn girl,’ he replied sadly.

‘Gamzee, she doesn’t exist. She was just a dream.’

‘But she was on Trollian. You can up and check my old messages if you want.’ He was right. She had been. But you still couldn’t bring yourself to believe any of this. She was just a dream. And a nightmare. And a very beautiful young girl who just happened to make your stomach feel a little funny when you thought about her. But nonetheless…

‘Mother fucker, you just gotta do what your heart is all up and tellin’ you.’ Gamzee interrupts your thoughts. He really does believe that she’s out there somewhere, waiting for you to find her. But she’s not. She can’t be. She’s just something you imagined, and your crazy dreams are just trying to make you believe a slave you once met is now a very powerful troll, and is in dire need of your help. It’s ridiculous. Preposterous. Absurd. And you most certainly will not give this whole stupid idea a second thought.

But the way she’d smiled at you made your collapsing and expanding bladder based vascular system beat just that little bit faster.

The memory of her screaming in agony made you want to tear your eyes out just so you don’t have to see it again.

You think for another few minutes. Severely conflicted, you toss over everything in your thinkpan.

‘Very well Gamzee,’ you say hesitantly. ‘I will go with you… if you order me to.’