Mystery Captured Icarus

by AcrylicMist

Summary:

To get off the ground, they've gotta look to the stars

Notes:

WARNING! VERY LONG FIC!

This is a prequel to my MAI series and I don't recommend reading those works AT ALL until this one is finished because #spoilers

Yes it took me three years to get back to writing this fic shhhhhh its ok we all make mistakes

Chapter 1: Tyrant/Insurgent

Tyrant/Insurgent

One Sweep remaining until Ascension Day.

The highblood had cuffed him like the seadweller was either used to binding dead animals or restraining trolls who wouldn’t need their fingers intact afterwards. Karkat honestly wasn’t sure which option he preferred. Both were pretty awful. His clawtips were tingling from bloodloss from how tight the cords had been tied and his head was ringing from the blow that had dropped him, but even blindfolded he could hear the seadweller’s limp from where Karkat hadn’t gone down without a fight.

Karkat tried to twist his wrists again, to loosen the coarse rope, and the highblood growled and spat at him. “Don’t be fuckin stupid.”

Karkat blinked into the darkness of the bag over his head and growled back at the direction the voice had come from and kicked out. There was a cruel snicker when his foot hit empty air so he growled again and flicked the highblood off, still stubbornly trying to free himself. The highblood laughed and said, “Looks like she was right. You’re a stubborn bastard, aren’t ya?”

“Fuck you,” Karkat snarled back, baring teeth he knew the other troll couldn’t see with the bag taped over his head. He was alone, blind and bound, with an empty sylladex. The situation couldn’t get much worse. Except it did, because that’s what always happened to him. The universe loved heaping shit on him so deep it drowned out the previous shit.

Karkat almost thought he knew this seadweller. Eridan had been six the last time they’d spoken, twiggy and short and full of a highblood’s cool, detached violence that he’d apparently grown the fuck into like a brick shithouse lit on fire. Through the view screen of his husktop Eridan at six sweeps hadn’t really looked anything like this seadweller, but that voice. That stupid, awful warble, the waver like this troll had gargled the sea itself and had gotten it stuck in his swallowpipe—how many seadwellers sounded like that? It was too distinctive to brush off as coincidence.

The horrible notion grew the longer Karkat vied his raw wrists together, ever-paranoid about tearing the skin there and sealing his doom as he tested the rope. The floor was vibrating softly. He’d been unconscious for most of the trip to wherever the fuck he was now, curtesy of a head wound that felt suspiciously crusty when he ground the back of his skull against the wall and felt where blood had dried spikes of hair together. The pain that dulled his thoughts wasn’t enough to rob him of the panbreak-inducing levels of stress he was currently under.

The seadweller was probably carting him off to the nearest shuttle-port for the Fleet to pick him up and giftwrap his corpse for the HIC to stick a fork in. His breaths were coming in quiet, panicked gasps, but he still had to guess. “Ampora?” He asked, slowly twisting his wrist to the side, feeling how the rope gave the smallest degree. “Is that your ugly mug I cracked? How’s that knee treating you, bastard?”

The highblood’s laughter stopped. “You’re fucking insane.”

Now Karkat laughed, one thumb at an impossible angle, numb claw sneakily sawing at the cord binding him. “I knew that was you. There’s only one seadweller out there with an accent so fucking stupid it makes me want to cull myself just for the crime of having working aural sponges.”

“Shut it,” the seadweller growled, hissing.

Karkat shook his head. “Nope,” he argued blindly. “If you wanted me quiet you should’ve gagged me. You failed the first rule of taking a captive because you are literally such a massively idiotic assailant you can’t perform basic restrains to the degree a pandead wriggler could, so in a way you deserve my constant shit-talking. My ridicule is the price for your incompetence, you squawkbeast-sounding motherfucker.”

There was another hiss, closer this time. Karkat jammed his thumb up higher, the joint screaming at him as he sawed at the cord. The highblood spat at him, “If you don’t shut the fuck up, I’ll make you.”

Karkat laughed at the threat, slightly crazed as he egged the troll on. “You can’t make me do jack shit, dumbass.”

The highblood grabbed him the exact instant Karkat’s claw snapped the rope and he tore off the hood blinding him, lashing out with his other hand as he frantically kicked away from the troll. Karkat’s claws snagged in flesh and ripped as he got his feet under him and bolted past the troll before the highblood could react with more than a startled gasp of pain.

The doorway was open and he tore through it, expecting to see the long hall of a shuttlebuggy as it crawled across the land. Instead a small curved wall of gray metal greeted him at the end of a space so small he could have reached both walls with his outstretched arms. There was no hallway, no other doors. Nowhere to run to. With his heart in his throat Karkat aimed for the window as the only means of escape left. He was not above crawling out to freedom through a broken window like a rouge lusus. The sky outside the small lone window was dark and therefore should have been safe from the sun, but the potential danger of fatal levels of radiation became his least most pressing issue as soon as he saw the curve of the planet set against its starry backdrop, the ground 30,000 feet below him.

He was on a fucking Fleetship.

A blood-curling snarl rang out from behind him and Karkat whipped around, hands in fists as his empty sylladex mocked him. The highblood’s face was cut with a rivulet of violet from Karkat’s claws and stained his fangs with its rich color.

Karkat was dead. He was so fucking dead. He was on a fucking fleetship with an enraged highblood who was wearing the hatchsign of a troll he might have once called friend, and he was so fucking dead that the sheer overkill of the situation was sort of ridiculous.

The seadweller was definitely Eridan. Even older he still had that stupid purple stripe in his hair and that fuck-off massive laser rifle strapped across his broad back like the thing was feather light. The sight of the enraged highblood coming at Karkat should have paralyzed him with fear, it should have made him slow and stupid, but Eridan wasn’t the first highblood to flip murder at the first sight of red and Karkat hadn’t lasted this long by being useless in a fight.

He crouched, lowering his center of gravity in preparation to either halt the highblood’s charge or grapple to the death as soon as he came within reach. Bare-clawed and desperate, Karkat stood his ground, fangs bared.

Eridan slid to a stop in the door way, panting as he wiped the violet off his cheek. “Dammit, Vantas,” he complained. “Can you cut your shit out for five fuckin minutes or is that too much to ask?”

Karkat snarled as the ship rocked around them, floor dipping uncomfortably as Alternia’s atmosphere resisted the liftoff. “If you so much as think about reaching for that gun,” Karkat warned, “I’ll kill you.”

Eridan rolled his eyes. “Like I’d shoot in a space this small,” he scoffed. “I’d blow a hole through the hull and kill us both. Wait!” He threw up both hands in supplication as Karkat predictably lunged the instant he knew the gun wasn’t a threat. “I ain’t here to strife you.”

Karkat came up just short of attempting to strangle the seadweller. “Eridan,” he snarled, the wound on his scalp stinging. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you.” The answer was irrelevant. Culling the highblood was the only option Karkat had available when he felt the blood trickling down the back of his neck. The seadweller knew, and so he had to die.

The question had been mostly rhetorical, but Eridan answered honestly. “I ain’t here to cull you either,” he said. “I’m just playing fetch for my moirail.” He grinned a slow grin, waiting for Karkat to get it.
Karkat did not get it. From what he remembered of the highblood’s quadrants, they were almost as fucked as his own, so he attacked with a question. “Who the fuck would be stupid enough to agree to be your moirail?”

Eridan was every bit as sweepingly pretentious as he’d been at six sweeps. The fucker actually dipped into a short bow at the mere mention of his moirail’s name, and the word that left his lips left Karkat stunned. “Feferi Piexes.”

Karkat was snarling immediately, advancing forward to certain death because dying here and now was the better option when faced with actually meeting the Heiress.

Eridan stopped him by drawing a sickle from out of his sylladex and brandishing it at him. It was one of Karkat’s own that had been looted from his unconscious body, but instead of deploying it as a strife specibus Eridan flipped the blade end-over-end in a fancy show of dexterity and offered it to Karkat hilt-first.

Karkat squinted suspiciously at the offered sickle, sensing the trap.

“Go on,” Eridan urged, holding the weapon out to him. “It’s true. I’m not here to fight you or hurt you. Fef just wants to talk.”

Karkat did feel loads more in control the instant his fingers found the familiar grip of his sickle. He tested the blade and found it was still sharp enough to gut the highblood if he did something cull-worthy. “Talk about what?” Karkat asked warily. Below his feet his planet got further and further away. A sickle in his hands didn’t change how utterly fucked he was.

“I don’t know,” Eridan squinted back at him knowingly. “She didn’t say, but I’m not stupid enough to think it doesn’t have something to do with that gogs-fucked up color you’re oozing out your hide.”

Karkat didn’t reach for the damning wound. He didn’t need to see the crimson on his fingers to feel the fatal flaw as his scalp prickled. Karkat didn’t remark or react to the admittance that a highblood knew his bloodcolor, and the ringing silence filled his ears below the hum of the ship’s engine. “Where are we going?”

“Sure as shit not to the fucking Fleet,” Eridan reassured him, surprisingly gentle. “Karkat, it’s okay. We’re not with the Empire.”

The words were treason even if they didn’t make sense. Drones should have filled the sky at the mere utterance of the betrayal. Karkat lifted his single sickle threateningly at the highblood. The edge glittered in the light. “Like hell you’re not.”

Eridan cocked an eyebrow at him. “Are you?” He asked softly.

Karkat gnawed at his lip, breath shuddering even if the hand that held his weapon was steady. He didn’t answer.

Eridan sighed as he held his hands up. His eyes were still the same wriggler gray Karkat remembered from a sweep ago. “She just wants to talk.”

“About what?” Karkat snapped, hissing. The floor rocked again, uncomfortably grating against his shot nerves. “Where are we going?”

The fucker shrugged. “Not sure what she’ll say, but this pod’s heading up to the Royal Orbitor. We’re not technically going off-planet, just into low orbit.”

He had no idea what the fuck an Orbitor was or why the Heiress had one in the first place. Weren’t all ships technically Fleet? And all pre-Ascension trolls were banned from leaving Alternia on brutal pain of very bloody death. “Why?”

“Privacy,” Eridan stressed, fins flared. “You’re not the only one on Alternia the Empress wants culled.”

That’s when it hit him. The Heiress was every bit as fucked as a mutant. The HIC wouldn’t suffer either of them to dare exist in Her universe. Karkat clenched the grip of his sickle tighter. “Moirails?” He questioned, probing. He remembered Eridan talking about this Feferi before, and every troll knew the hatchsign of Piexes, but he thought that there’d been some kind of falling out between them of the murderous kind, and anyway hadn’t Eridan been waxing fucking red for the tyrian?

Eridan nodded sharply, a jerk of the chin downward that highlighted the glare reflecting off his glasses. “Moirails,” he confirmed smugly.

“I thought she wouldn’t have you?” Karkat braced himself for the attack, aware of how stupid provoking the seadweller was, but Eridan simply shrugged and grinned again, showing off shark-sharp teeth.

“Things change,” Eridan said, running a hand through the purple stripe in his hair. He slowly captchalouged the laser rifle, spreading his empty hands. “This doesn’t have to be what it looks like.”

“The fucking kidnapping?” Karkat argued back, hackles tense and lip raised. He wasn’t fool enough to so easily fall for a highblood’s lies.

“It was more of an unwilling relocation on your part,” Eridan turned the phrase around on him, shrugging like the probable pan injury wasn’t an issue. “Again, it was for privacy. I didn’t reckon you’d be so keen to sit and listen to reason when there was a million different ways to run.”

Karkat scowled and at last gave in and rubbed gingerly at the back of his scalp. The pain was a warning, the bruised flesh oozy with worse treasons than whatever these seadwellers were planning. He didn’t look at the blood on his fingers and he sure as shit didn’t let Eridan either, scrubbing the color furiously against the black of his blank, signless shirt to hide the evidence. “Was the head trauma really necessary?”

Eridan clicked his tongue sharply against his teeth, still holding his weight off of his injured knee. “You nearly culled me, Kar.” He accused, dabbing at the claw marks carved down his cheek. “The knockout was self-defense by then.”

Karkat rolled his eyes. Any troll that got the drop on him deserved the degree of violence he’d rightfully used to defend himself. “But did you die?”

“No?”

It wasn’t distraction enough. “I want my stuff back,” Karkat demanded. “If you want me to go along with whatever the hell is going on, I need my full sylladex returned to me.”

Eridan dipped his chin in a short nod, agreeing readily to a demand that should have been ridiculous. “We’re not thieves,” he said, shuffling the appropriate cards out of his sylladex and handing them over. “I just didn’t fancy you waking up and flipping your shit before I could talk you down.”

Karkat eagerly snatched up the offered cards and instantly slotted them into his sylladex. He had his paired sickles back, his husktop, his books and favorite films, all of the generally useless stuff he hoarded for no good reason. The familiar burden of a full sylladex settled his mind as his options for weapons expanded into whatever heavy bullshit he could throw the fastest plus his sickles.

Karkat kept one sickle trained on him, distrustful as he took mental stock of his inventory. Everything seemed to be miraculously in place and unbothered. It did not make him trust the highblood more.

Eridan kept rubbing at the wounds down his face, complaining. “How’d you get out of my ropes? Those knots were secure as fuck.”

Karkat wiggled his tingling fingers, the feeling still slowly leeching back into them. The pain was beginning to settle in, but adrenaline held it off. “I’ll never tell.”

“Stubborn bastard,” Eridan spit at him, turned to limp back to the main hub of the pod. “We’ll be there soon.”

Karkat hesitantly ghosted after him. Looking through the small port window made him uncomfortable. Alternia was so far away, and apparently he preferred the company of a seadweller compared to the empty void on the other side of the glass. At least with Eridan he had a fighting chance if things went sideways. Sickles wouldn’t work against stars.

The machine hummed around him, tinny and low. “What is this thing?” Karkat asked.

Eridan fiddled with the array of buttons, dials and devices set into the dashboard of the control hub. He slapped at them hard enough that something started beeping and the highblood growled and slapped the panel again, harder, and the beeping stopped. “It’s a piece of shit is what it is,” Eridan spat out. “It’s a leftover from before adults were banned, dozens of sweeps old…. Fef fished it out the brine a sweep or so back and repaired what we could.” The small pod shuddered, groaning with the scrape of metal on metal. “The actual Royal Orbitor itself is in much better shape. Space is kinder than leagues below. Salt eats away everything.”

The steel around him didn’t look like it had sat abandoned on the seabed for sweeps. “Repaired?”

“Under-the-table stuff mostly,” Eridan told him, secretly proud. “I’m no mechanic and Fef’s not either. Lots of laws were broken to get this rustbowl off the ground.”

“Why?” Karkat asked, still holding his sickle. “Why not stay on-planet? Drones can still strike this high up, or even an actual Fleetship. There’s no way this is the safer option.”

“It’s not about safety,” Eridan admitted. “It’s about privacy. If we’re going to get the two highest cull-bait trolls in the same room, you’d better bet I’m not doing it anywhere the Empire might overhear us. The atmosphere here will scramble and hide any transmissions. The Fleet only listens to what’s happening on-planet. They aren’t expectin’ the likes of this insanity.”

 

Out the small window, something slowly rose into sight. Small, about the size of a mid-range hive, hovering motionlessly in the backdrop between sky and space. It was drab, unadorned and egg-shaped, steel mixed with bands of lusus-white that reflected the red light of the nearby sun and turned the whole floating contraption aglow with fire.

“That’s it?” Karkat asked.

“Sure is,” Eridan replied. “Now hold tight, landing this thing’s a bitch.”

Karkat braced himself in the open doorway, but Eridan handled the landing with the bumpy skill of a troll who’s done this more than a few times. With a gentle hiss, the pod docked seamlessly with the Orbitor and the mechanism clicked into place. Eridan stood up from his hunched position over the steering hub, cracking his knuckles. “Not bad,” he gloated. “Fef might make a pilot of me yet.”

Karkat scoffed at him, irritated. “Let’s just get this over with,” he snapped. “And no funny business. You can get this piece of shit back planet-side, right?”

“Course I can,” Eridan puffed out his chest. “I’ve made this trip at least twenty times by now.”

Karkat resisted the urge to wing a sickle at his head, growling.

The door snicked open, rust grinding in the gears. A darkly lit hallway stretched into the Orbitor’s guts. Eridan went strolling down the creepy hallway like the place was his own fucking hive. “You coming? Fef’s waiting.”

Karkat scowled and walked after the troll, ready to slice at whatever shadow was sure to jump out at him. Eridan haughtily threw open a heavy door at the end of the hall, and golden light spilled out.

The carpet was bloody fuchsia, every inch painted in the rich royal of Peixes dread stamp and gold glittering highblood nonsense. It was an affront to his eyestalks. There was even a fucking throne in the middle of the room, gold too, and the troll seated on it held herself with the grace and poise befitting the highest of the castes. Her hands were empty, face consideratory as she gazed down at him, the long, curved tines of her royal horns arching beautifully over her skull.

“Karkat Vantas?” Feferi Peixes asked, dipping her head at him in a move he couldn’t help but read as predatory.

Karkat crossed his arms over his signless chest. “You didn’t have to send your errand boy after me,” he told her, uncowed. “If you know my name, you sure as shit know my chumhandle.”

Feferi grinned at him, her teeth shark-sharp and mirthful. “Maybe I wanted to meet face-to-face?”

“And maybe I don’t fancy being kidnapped,” he shot back. “You’re lucky I didn’t gut your moirail.”
Eridan laughed from the side. “He’s right,” he admitted. “Even when surprised, that little fucker’s a scrapper.”

Feferi shot the other highblood a concerned glance that was more glare than pale pity as Eridan made a show of limping forward on his bum knee. “You let him beat you that badly?”

Eridan shrugged sheepishly. “You said not to kill him.”

“Or hurt him,” Feferi added, her eyes tracing the places where blood had dried the back of Karkat’s scalp into a crusty mess.

Eridan held two fingers an inch apart. “I only hurt him a little,” he admitted. “Besides, we’re past that now. It’s all friends here.”

Karkat growled at him, low and deep and potentially murderous.

Feferi laughed, delighted. “You’re right, I do know your Chumhandle.” She admitted slyly.

“We never talked,” Karkat defended himself.

“But you and Eridan did,” Feferi reminded him. “And you talked with Terezi and Kanaya too.” She studied him closely. “It was enough for me to put the pieces together.”

“What pieces?” Karkat demanded. “I was never anything but careful.”

Feferi clucked her tongue at him. “You type in gray,” she said. “It’s not exactly a bulletproof defense.”

“Nor is it overtly suspicious,” Karkat fired back. “There’s no law against typing outside of your caste.”

“There is, actually, but that’s not the point.” Feferi crossed her arms.

“So what’s the fucking point?” Karkat asked, daring to point his sickle threateningly at the highest troll he’ll ever meet. He was a dead troll by sunrise. The details of how he got there didn’t matter as long as he tried his hardest to not go quietly. He remembered the combination to the pod. Maybe he’ll get it back planet-side without crashing, find a new hive to steal and hide in, keep talking online like nothing as wrong until Ascension Day came knocking and the drones found him. “The two of you know about me. Trolls who know about me don’t get to live. It’s me or it’s you, always has been.”

Eridan growled at him, lip curling as he decaptchalouged his laser rifle again. Karkat ignored him, gaze locked on the tyrian.

Feferi studied him like he was some strange bug she’d found under a rock, something fascinating but with too many legs to make head of without feeling moderately disgusted. The wrongness of his mutation wasn’t nearly quirky or interesting enough to spare him from that golden culling fork he’d heard so much about.

Which is why her next words surprised him. “Why can’t it be us?” Feferi asked, her chin tilted. “You’re no more doomed than I am.”

Karkat laughed at her, slightly crazed. “Wrong,” he accused. “The HIC at least will give you a fighting chance. You kill her, you live. You become the next Empress. No matter what, I always die in the end.”

“By the Empire’s terms, yes,” Feferi readily agreed. She lounged back on her throne, resplendent in the gaudy false-security of her blood. “But maybe not by my terms.”

More words of treason wouldn’t fool him. “Two trolls?” He challenged. “Say you’re not with the Empire then. I’ll believe it simply because the both of you are fucked too, but that doesn’t meant shit when it’s just you two lonely, stupid fucks hiding out on an old piece of spacejunk.”

Feferi had the sheer audacity to look hurt by his words, her mouth downturned in a frown. “Its better than dying,” she told him.

“You’ve got time,” Karkat snarled back, knuckles ashy with the strain as he clutched his sickle tighter. “You get to live until Ascension Day. My clock was up the instant I fucking hatched. Every day I’ve lived since then has been an unexpected bonus. I was never fucking deluded enough to imagine some far-fetched shit of a daymare dream where I somehow lived past six.”

Feferi rose to the challenge, baring teeth at him, finned ears flared. “And yet here you stand, already seven,” she shot back at him. “Are you just going to give up then? Be content with the time you’ve gotten and just let the drones have you when the time comes?”

Karkat winged the sickle at her, expertly hurling the weapon end-over-end in a fast track to strike her. He had another pair ready in his hands a moment later, turning on Eridan in case the other troll tried something, a snarl already in place.

The sickle clashed thunderously against the gold of the throne, sparking off the metal before spinning uselessly to the side. The Heiress flinched away from the blow fast enough to dodge, fins shrinking down in fear as he advanced.

Eridan was still behind him, but the stupid highblood couldn’t risk a shot with the rifle for fear of hitting his moirail. A laser round from a gun of that size would burn a hole straight through Karkat and probably this Orbitor too, and bring all three of them down.

Karkat marched up the steps of the gilded chair until he was face to face with the Heiress, growling like the end of the fucking world. She met his glare unflinchingly, steel in her gray eyes as Karkat hooked the end of one sickle under her chin. She did not bare her throat for mercy. The tyrian didn’t budge an inch, cold as the deeps, the black wells of her eyes vast as the voids between the stars as the Heiress for the Alternian Empire stared down a cullbait mutant like he was an equal, like the sickle at her neck wasn’t there.

Eridan was snarling from behind him, but fuck that noise. This was between them.

His breath came in pants. “I will never let the Empire have me,” he swore, heart pounding. “And there is not a force in this universe strong enough to shake that from me.”

Feferi leveled her eyes at him like she was peeling back his skin, and when she spoke, it was with a self-satisfied purr. “Good.”

Karkat had always known that highbloods were fast, but Feferi moved so fast he almost couldn’t track the motion. She seized his sickle at the hilt, her cold fingers closing over his own with a vice-like grip, locking him into place. She moved the weapon away from her neck with disdain, bending his wrist at such an unforgiving angle that he either had to release it or break the bones. He stubbornly did not let go, aiming for her face with his other sickle. She caught that one too, hand clamped over his so he couldn’t drop them or pull anything else out of his sylladex.

She stared him down, her face like ice. “I have always had the supreme misfortune of knowing exactly what I must do to survive.” Her grip on his hands increased, threatening to snap his fingers like the matchsticks they were. She bore down harder, her teeth in points as she snarled at him. “The ironic twist to this is I’ve also been gifted the degree of self-awareness to know that I’m not enough of a fighter to ever overthrow the HIC in single combat like our law dictates. Facing Her is suicide. If I’m going to overthrow her, I need to find a better way.”

Karkat laughed, pinned in place and helpless as he struggled, hissing. “The fuck do you need me for? Go find another troll to kill yourself with.”

She released him, and the unexpected shock of it made him tumble down the short steps from how hard he’d been reeling away. He didn’t fall, but it wasn’t a graceful decent. Eridan was waiting at the bottom, and from her throne Feferi rose, stalking down the stairs towards him with her hair dragging behind her like a flag.

Karkat was pinned between the two highbloods, utterly fucked. He lifted his sickles again, determined to go down fighting.

She blinked at him. “You’re not giving up? I assure you, your situation is quite hopeless.” She unsheathed a massive gold culling fork out of her sylladex. The tines glittered coldly in the light.

He was so dead. He’d always known he was going to die but it had never stared him in the face so certainly before. This was it. He was about to die and die bloody.

Karkat squared his feet as he heard the telltale thrum of the laser rifle behind him powering up as Eridan took aim. “Never.”

She ground the tines of the culling fork into the floor with a sharp clang, leaning on it like a staff. “I’m not either,” she told him like he was a confidant, grinning. “Eridan tells me I’m not cut out for the sheer amount of violence needed to see my eighth sweep. I think he’s right, but only because no amount of fighting will ever be enough to win. There has to be another way.”

“There isn’t,” Karkat argued back tightly, hands shaking. And there never had been. There had only ever been the HIC and her rule, killing and dying and dying and dying until there were no more trolls left to oppose her and her banner stretched from one end of the galaxy to the other and even past that to starsystems they hadn’t even finished naming yet.

“That’s not what you told Terezi once,” Feferi argued, eyebrows raised. “She said you had a plan.”

And he did. A stupid, foolish, impossible plan he’d dreamt up as a five sweep old and had discarded as hopeful bullshit by six. But the words drew him to a halt. “Terezi told you that?”

Feferi didn’t take her eyes off him. “She did.”
He thought about the teal name in his inbox he’d been ignoring for perigrees with a flash of guilt. He wilted, just a little. “That plan was originally for her.”

Feferi tapped her clawtips against the shaft of her culling fork. “You wanted to find a way to save her?”

“Of course,” Karkat shot back, hissing. Terezi didn’t deserve to die just because Vriska’s wrigglerhood bullshit had dropped her down into a bracket of trolls not perfect enough for the Empire to allow their continued existence.

“But not yourself?” Feferi questioned.

Karkat snapped his jaws together to bite off the reply. His plan had been for Terezi, for Tavros, for Aradia before Vriska had murked her and permanently removed the rustblood from Karkat’s short list of trolls that needed saving. For Kanaya who would never have been content with the duty of her blood, for the oliveblood who’d grown up in a cave and would never bow to Alternian authority even at the price of her life, for the moirail who wouldn’t live without her. For a soul-lost subjugglator with a burnt-out thinkpan too timid for the violence expected of his caste who’d been at the top of Karkat’s short list until he had removed himself permanently and proved that he did indeed possess the spectacular degree of violence that a purpleblood needed to survive in the Church.

Karkat shoved the thought of Gamzee to the back of his mind. “My plan only would have worked for a few of us,” he said through gritted fangs. “There was a cap on how many. Adding myself to the roster was an unnecessary risk and would have endangered us all.”

Eridan squinted at him. “Plus you couldn’t be sure if they’d cull you or not?” He guessed shrewdly, the crosshairs of the rifle still trained on him with an unwavering grip. “How fucking noble of you.”

“Fuck off,” Karkat hissed back, nearly at the end of his mental limit and feeling vicious with it. “So that’s it then? You heard I had a half-baked idea to sneak a few trolls off planet and wanted in, right? Why not? The two of you are just as fucked as any other cullbait rustblood out there.” He barked out a bitter laugh, every muscle pulled taunt, pushing the two highbloods farther, goading them to attack and give him the upper hand against their distance weapons. “Its real fucking funny how you seadwellers think you’re so much higher than the rest of us. Your precious bloodcolor doesn’t count for shit when it’s up against the Empire’s ridiculous law.”

Feferi didn’t react at the low blow so he twisted to the violetblood. “You might actually fucking survive Ascension Day if you convince the Empire that sharing a quadrant with the Heiress was temporary insanity.” He spat the words at Eridan, digging the verbal knife deeper. “Even better, instead of dropping her like shit to beg mercy of the Fleet, just cull the bitch yourself. Hell, the Empress might even give you a fucking medal for it.”

Eridan snarled like a rippersaw at the insults Karkat fired at him, fins flared, face purpled with rage. It was suicide to provoke them but that’s how he wanted it. Karkat wanted this to end with a fight, and he was determined to not go down alone.

“Stop this!” Feferi screeched at him, her hair curled around her face as she aimed the tines of her fork at him with clear menace and restraint. “Karkat, we’re trying to help you, you dense, paranoid
motherFUCKER!!!”

Karkat shrieked wordlessly back as the Orbitor rocked below his feet, sickles crossed, spinning leagues above the surface of the planet he was never meant to survive. “I don’t NEED your fucking help!!!” The hum of the laser rifle behind him was as loud as a scream, ready to rip through him and burn a hole the size of a dinnerplate through his thorax.

“Well, we do!” Feferi thundered at him, jaw gaping, fishbone fangs bared in threat alongside ear fins raised to their highest degree, the face of a daymare come to life. She lifted the fork like she’d smack him with it. “We need your help! We need your plan to work! We need you to calm the hell down and see reason for long enough for us to accomplish something more productive than outright murder!”

“Do you want to fucking die?” Eridan demanded, jabbing the rifle at him. “What’s your fucking problem? We are trying not to kill you, maybe don’t be such a shithead about it.”

Pinned between the two of them, Karkat hesitated. If he charged one of them he had the feeling Feferi would find an easy way to stop him. That tyrian had the strength of the deeps in her bones and he’d felt it well enough when she’d grabbed him like ice wrapped in flesh. If he made it to Eridan first without getting vaporized, struck on the left on the side of his bad knee, maybe he could slit the troll’s throat before Feferi reached him. Maybe that massive gun was powerful enough to drop the Heiress at point-blank range. Maybe he could make it back down to Alternia without crashing the pod, keep what little time he had left to himself and continue to scrape out his existence with a knife always at his neck and eyes always staring behind his back.

But Karkat didn’t want to die—he had always been a troll who lived, lived in spite of all the odds stacked so unfairly against him, and even now breathing was a hard habit to break.

He cautiously lowered his strife specibus, ready to snap his sickles back up at the first hint of provocation. “Tell me what you want from me.”

And the Heiress smiled at him and it was the promise of a star about to go supernova, the kind that left nothing in it’s wake, sheer victorious destruction. “I want you to be my general.”

48 perigees remaining until Ascension Day.

 

The perigee Karkat spent aboard the Royal Orbitor was not all shits and giggles. He and Eridan were at each other’s throats more often than not and Feferi was almost at the point where watching them tear into each other would take less effort than trying to deescalate things.

Things were strained. Karkat kept mostly to himself as he reconciled the idea that a pair of highbloods knew his bloodcolor and hadn’t tried to kill him for it, that Eridan and Feferi, two trolls out of his wrigglerhood he’d never expected to hear from again, were plotting treason of the highest kind and wanted him to join them in their fatal debauchery.

It was even more astonishing that Karkat went along with it, dusting off his husktop from out of his sylladex. He’d had a plan, once, for something similar to what Feferi was asking of him. A way to steal a few trolls off-planet. But it was a tubedream, the real-world logistics fraught with a thousand reasons why it was impossible. Simply living aboard the Orbitor for a perigee reinforced all of his previous notions for why escaping the planet was impossible.

Eridan was the troll who ran the pod down on-planet to keep the RO supplied enough to support life and the task of keeping three trolls alive was gargantuan and intricate in unexpected ways. The sopor was thin and cut with gel to make it last, thin enough that Karkat woke with dayterrors dancing at the edges of his thinkpan and feeling like he hadn’t rested at all. The food supply had to be restocked every few days, water rationed, and the RO itself required constant upkeep on the mechanical kind beyond the limited skill the three of them possessed. It was all Eridan could to do keep enough billbird-tape slapped over the worst of the repairs to keep the ship floating. Figuring out how to dispose of waste alone was a puzzle that stumped Karkat into a growling mess, frustrated with everything he’d already known.

He looked out the port window to the face of his hatch-planet turning slowly below. The HIC didn’t need to jail them when the planet itself was the prison, the sheer inhospitality of the empty void outside an insurmountable barrier for a bunch of seven sweep old idiots forced to focus on surviving the planet itself rather than dream about escaping it.

Karkat growled again and slapped at his keyboard as the program he had running the statistics he’d thrown together on how far he could make it with a group of ten trolls crashed and burned in under three days. And that was with the program assuming they had an actual functioning ship instead of a sea-eaten rustbowl and what looked like the rejected eggspawn of a building drone and a dumpster.

Feferi interrupted his brooding with a pester.

CC: )(ave you been making much progress?
CG: NO.
CC: anyt)(ing I mig)(t be able to )(elp wit)(? I wouldn’t want to be a s)(ellfis)( )(ost.
CG: NO.

Karkat ran the program again after tweaking a few variables, adjusting oxygen intake to frankly dangerous levels, but hey, if taking turns being unconscious is what it took to survive then…

The program crashed in under 12 hours this time.

Karkat hissed sharply, flexing his claws before he rubbed at his tired eyes.

CC: w)(at is it that’s bot)(ering you?

Karkat snorted to himself before answering.

CG: EVERYTHING. THERE’S A REASON I FUCKING ABANDONED MY HIVESHIT ESCAPE PLAN IN THE FIRST PLACE AND IT WASN’T BECAUSE I GAVE UP AND ROLLED OVER TO THE EMPIRE. ESCAPING ALONE IS SUICIDE. AND ESCAPING WITH OTHER TROLLS CREATES A RECIPROCLE DEATH EFFECT THAT GOES UP BY A FACTOR OF 2.52 FOR EVERY TROLL ADDED UNTIL WE HIT SEVEN TROLLS, WHERE THE NUMBER FUCKING TRIPLES FOR EVERY TROLL AFTER THAT.
CG: IT’S CUTTLEFISH IN A CAGE, FEFERI. IF WE DON’T STARVE, SUFFOCATE, OR BLOW OURSELVES UP, WE’LL FUCKING MURDER EACH OTHER UNTIL NOTHING REMAINS.
CC: is the main issue us culling each other or does t)(is deat)( ---Effect wave frond mec)(anical issues?
CG: WHAT DOES IT FUCKING MATTER? IT’S A NONSENSE BULLSHIT PROGRAM I CODED WHEN WE ALL KNOW I CAN’T CODE FOR FUCKING SHIT ABOUT PROBABILITIES I CAN’T BE CERTAIN ARE EVEN IN THE BALLPARK OF REALISTIC ODDS FOR A CONVOLUTED PROBLEM SO INTENSE AND CHALLANGING THAT ATTEMPTING TO TRY AND WRANGLE SENSE OUT OF THE MEANINGLESS TANGLE IS SOMETHING ONLY A LOWER LIFE FORM WOULD THINK WAS A GOOD IDEA.
CG: AND WE DON’T EVEN HAVE A FUCKING SHIP. I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT ME TO DO HERE.
CC: survive?
CG: HOW? IF WE STAY WE DIE AND I CAN’T FIGURE OUT A WAY FOR US TO LIVE.
CC: I did not send eridan after you because I thoug)(t you’d miraculously engine---Er our salvation out of your ass, karkat! I know you don’t )(ave the slig)(test clue about space travel or intergalactic existence any more than the average seven sweep old.
CG: THEN WHY THE FUCK WAS MY PLAN SO FUCKING IMPORTANT TO YOU IF YOU KNEW ALL ALONG IT WAS BULLSHIT? WHY DRAG ME INTO THIS OF YOU KNEW I HAD NOTHING TO OFFER?

Karkat can’t force the facts together in a way that made him understand. His plan had been an idea, a wriggler’s dream. It was never anything concrete.

CC: because I’m trying to start a revolution, karkat! I want to save us all, and I thoug)(t a good place to start was wit)( a troll who wanted to save a few friends. Do you know )(ow unbereefably rare that is? I’ve been scouting out trolls across the planet, looking for ones I thoug)(t mig)(t be useful but its all a s)(oal of bloodt)(irsty loyalists who want to kill in order to advance to better fit into a society that I want to leave be)(ind.
CC: You said we were like cuttlefish)( in a cage, right? I wanted to start with a troll I could be reasonably sure wouldn’t eat their neig)(bors.
CG: THAT’S WHY YOU WANTED ME? NOT BECAUSE I HAD A PLAN BUT BECAUSE YOU THOUGH I WAS HARMLESS?

In a way, the insult was worse than the misunderstanding.

CC: no, its because you )(ad a plan! A plan to save ot)(ers! T)(at’s w)(at I cared about, more so t)(an if the plan actually worked or not.
CG: GOOD TO FUCKING KNOW MY USELESSNESS DOESN’T SURPRISE YOU, HEIRESS.
CC: )(aving a sense of compassion isn’t useless, karkat! In fact, it’s one of the t)(ings I deeply wish more trolls )(ad. It’s always been just me alone with my compassion and empat)(y, and even after sweeps of beating a sense of sympat)(y into my moirail he can still be remarkably stubborn about )(is murderous feelings.
CG: TMI! I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR MIORAIL’S SHORTCOMINGS AS A REASONABLE TROLL. THAT’S NOT MY PROBLEM.
CC: it is if we’re to be stuck in space toget)(er, and the fact )(olds true for every fucking troll we bring with us. we don’t )(ave the luxury of treating each other the way we’ve been raised too. T)(at’s )(ow we get the cuttlefish)( mentality.
CG: SO HOW DO YOU PROPOSE WE REWIRE THE FUNDAMENTAL FEELINGS THAT OUR RACE HAS BEEN BRED INTO SINCE THEY FUCKING HATCHED? GO ON, ENLIGHTEM ME.
CG:THEY BEHAVE THIS WAY BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THEY NEEDED TO IN ORDER TO SURVIVE. IT’S NOT AS SIMPLE AS SIMPLY ORDERING ‘NO MORE FRIENDMURDER’.
CC: I just don’t understand why trolls want to )(urt each other. I’ll never understand it.
CG: YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND IT BECAUSE YOU WERE HATCHED AT THE TOP, FEFERI. YOU’RE THE FUCKING HEIRESS SUPREME OF OUR KIND. YOU NEVER HAD TO FIGHT AND STRUGGLE AND BLEED TO SURVIVE WHEN EVERYTHING WAS HANDED TO YOU THE DAY YOU WERE HATCHED, AND I KNOW YOU CAN FIGHT BUT HAVE YOU EVER KILLED? HAVE YOU EVER HAD TO? DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE DREAD KNOWLEDGE THAT HAVING EMOTIONS LIKE GUILT AND MERCY GET TROLLS KILLED?
CG: BECAUSE FOR LOWBLOODS, THE ONLY WAY TO LIVE IS TO BE RUTHLESS BEYOND EXCEPTION. IT’S A LEARNED BEHAVIOR AND THAT’S HOW ALL OF THEM ACT BECAUSE THEY ONES WHO DIDN’T GOT FUCKING KILLED WHEN THEY WERE THREE. YOUR ‘CUTTLEFISH MENTALITY’ IS WHAT KEPT THEM SAFE.
CG: SO TELL ME, CUTTLEFISH CULLER, DO YOU REALLY NOT UNDERSTAND IT?

There was a long pause in her reply, plenty of time for Karkat to start another doomed run on his husktop before the program overheated from repeated failures.

When she replied, it was decisive.

CC: I’m trying to. I know we )(ave to work backwards to even reef a starting point and this mission is impossible by design, but I )(ad to start somew)(ere. We all do. discovering a little empat)(y mig)(t not be a bad way to begin.

Karkat sighed as his husktop produced anther fail. He typed out his reply, already weary.

CG: NO, IT’S NOT. BUT EMPATHY WON’T DO MUCH WHEN UP AGAINST THE EMPIRE.
CC: you mig)(t be surprised t)(ere. trolls will fight to the deat)( over quadrants.
CG: SO?
CC: so we’ve just got to make all of us clad---E!
CG: YOU’RE FUCKING INSANNE.
CC: I want to rebel against the Empress, remove as many of our agemates from the planet as we can, and begin an empire of my own that will )(opefully battle )(ers for the fate of our entire race. I )(ave to be a little insane for all of that, I’d think.

Karkat rubbed at his eyes again before responding.

CG: YOU REALLY WANT TO SAVE US ALL?
CC: for s)(ore! I’d take everyone wit)( us if it were a reel option.
CG: FUCK. YOU /DO/ WANT TO SAVE US ALL. IF I WERE YOU I’D CUT AND RUN WHILE I STILL COULD.
CC: strong words coming from a troll who planned to save all of )(is friends, minus )(imself of coarse, to give them a better chance of survival.
CG: FUCK YOU!
CC: doesn’t make it any less tru---E!
CG: IT’S A SHITTY PLAN.
CC: and we don’t )(ave time to make it less s)(itty. We only )(ave a sweep left until Ascension Day.
CG: SHIT HITS THE FAN THEN NO MATTER WHAT. LIVE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE TO A FACTOR OF TWELVE, OR DIE AGAIN. IF WE PLAY OUR CARDS JUST RIGHT THERE’S A SLIM CHANCE WE DIE ONLY 99.9% OF THE TIME. THOSE ARE OUR ODDS.
CC: dramatic much?
CG: ONLY ABOUT THE THINGS THAT MATTER. WHICH IS ALL OF THEM.
CC: so w)(at are you going to do about it?

Karkat stared at the blinking teal icon on his screen that he’d been putting off for far too long. Bringing more trolls into the fold upped the danger exponentially, but Feferi’s dream was for everyone they could manage to get, and Karkat already had a list of trolls he thought might make good first candidates for Feferi’s new Empire. If he was actually going to try and make this work, he damn sure wasn’t leaving behind the trolls he’d first dreamed this dream for. Feferi’s goal had been his dream once. It was time to start acting like he believed in it.

CG: THERE’S SOMEONE I HAVE TO TALK TO. SEVERAL SOMEONES.
CC: do you trust t)(em?
CG: WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO IF WE WANT TO MAKE THIS WORK. AND YES, I TRUST THEM.
CC: and I trust you enoug)( to know what you’re doing!
CG: THAT TRUST WILL GET YOU KILLED.
CC: but not by you, rig)(t?
CG: NOT INTENTIONALLY, NOT AT THIS POINT AT LEAST.
CC: t)(en t)(at’s a problem for another nig)(t!

Her icon went dark. Outside the horizon was beginning to glow red with the coming dawn and the extra dose of radiation the sunlight brought which protected the RO from detection would scramble all communications. He had to make this quick, before both his husktop and his bravery ran dry.

carcinoGeneticist (CG) has begun Trolling gallowsCallibrator (GC)!

CG: I KNOW IT’S BEEN PERIGEES AND I FULLY DESERVE YOUR WELL-EARNED HATRED OF THE SIGHT OF MY GRAY BLOCKY TEXT BUT BEFORE YOU RIGHTEOUSLY SLAM YOUR FIST DOWN ON THE BLOCK BUTTON I NEED YOU TO HEAR ME OUT.
CG: I AM BEING 100% FUCKING SERIOUS RIGHT NOW. I’M SO FUCKING SERIOUS I COULD LIGHT A FIRE WITH THE STRENGTH OF MY MENTAL GYMNASTICS ALONE, THAT’S HOW FUCKING SERIOUS I AM.
CG: I AM NOT SHITTING YOU. TEREZI, I AM RIGHT FUCKING NOW STUCK IN LOW-ORBIT AROUND THE PLANET ITSELF WITH THE MOTHERFUCKING HEIRESS, FEFERI PEIXES, AND TOGETHER WE ARE PLANNING GREVIOUS TREASON MOST HIGH OF THE KIND THE CRUELEST BAR WOULD SHIT ITSELF AT THE BAREST HINT OF. REAL OVERTHROW THE ENTIRE ALTERNAIN EMPIRE AND MURDER THE EMPRESS TYPE STUFF.
CG: I AM DOING /SO MUCH/ TREASON RIGHT NOW.
CG: SO IN COMPLETE SERIOUSNESS, I NEED TO ASK YOU WHAT YOU THINK OF ME COMMITTING CRIMES SO ABHORRENT AND HORRIBLE THAT THE FLEET WOULD DRONE STRIKE ME RIGHT NOW FOR DARING TO BREATHE ANOTHER DISLOYAL BREATH.

Terezi’s icon lit up at the pester, and he waited less than half a second for her reply.

GC: I’D S4Y IT’S 4BOUT FUCKING TIM3, K4RK4T.

He couldn’t help the feral grin that broke across his lips, baring teeth at the screen in triumph.

CG: AND IF I ASKED YOU IF YOU WANTED TO JOIN ME ON THIS MISSION TO BECOME THE WORST TRATORS THE EMPIRE HAS EVER FUCKING SEEN?
GC: ID S4Y H3LL FUCKING Y3S. WH3R3 DO I SIGN UP?

Karkat felt his heart begin to pound with the first victory so far, even if he realistically knew Terezi would always be on his side. One down. Five more to go.

...

Kanaya, in her roundabout way that gently eroded the point in her favor at all times, expressed only a median degree of intrest in becoming a traitor.

“I could make a life for myself within the brooding caverns,” she mused after hearing about the plan. “I could still pester everyone. It’s not like remaining on-planet makes me any more of a distant friend than the Empire would create after Ascension Day. I could still work my embroideries and manage a few underground topiaries. I could find happiness there.”

“You would,” Karkat agreed, watching her face shift through the voice and call feature on his husktop. Her image wavered, smoke on the water from the radiation interference. “You’re resourceful, adaptable. You could do well living under the boot of the Empress.”

“But?” Kanaya asked of him, hearing his unspoken argument.

Karkat sighed. “How long do you think it would take before living underground drove you hiveshit? In the brooding caverns you’d never see the sun again.” This was Karkat’s best weapon. He knew his friends. He knew that Kanaya’s backwards love of the radioactive light would be her undoing.

Kanaya sighed too, the sound following him through the speakers. “You say that like living aboard a fleetship would be better. There’s no sunlight in space.”

“It’s better than being trapped under the crust,” Karkat told her. “And you’d be with us, your friends, not ancient hivebrained hatchslaves who’ve forgotten free will.”

Kanaya laughed. She fucking laughed, and her voice as cold when she answered. “Karkat,” she hissed softly. “What if I want to save those hivebrained hatchslaves? What if I want to make things better for all of them? All of us jadebloods? How can I do that if I abandon them?”

Karkat sucked in his breath, steadied himself, and hissed back. “You will change nothing from the inside. The Empire will crush you the same way it’s crushed them. If you want to help them, really truly help them, join us. Help us wreck the Empire’s shit. You can’t fix Her broken system—you can only help us destroy it so we can built a better one in its place.”

“With only the three of you?” Kanaya asked sarcastically. “Not much of an army, Karkat.”

“There’s four of us,” Karkat defended himself. “And its better odds than you trying to go up against the brooding caverns alone.”

“Perhaps,” Kanaya considered, and he could almost picture her pursing her lips, the points of her slim fangs bared the same way Feferi’s were as the Heiress listened to this call closely.

“They’ll be five with you,” Karkat said, sweating. “And more on the way. Are you in?”

He could almost hear her smile. “Perhaps,” she purred, and she ended the call.

Karkat waited until his huskscreen faded to black before slowly turning to face Feferi.

She didn’t look pleased. “You lost her.”

“No,” Karkat countered swiftly, grinning. “We won. She’s going to join us.”

“How can you be so sure?” Feferi fretted. “She didn’t sound keen on it at the end.”

“Because I know her,” Karkat gloated, knew her in an endless array of inside-jokes and wrigglerhood stories and hopes and dreams and green hedges in the sun, reading trashy rainbowdrinker slashfic in the rust-red dust of the dessert, how she’d sobbed after Aradia’s death because Kanaya was always so sure that she could keep a handle on Vriska until the curleanblood proved herself unhandlable. “She’ll say yes.”

“Why?” Feferi challenged him.

“Because she’s a good person,” Karkat said darkly. “And she’ll kill anyone who tries to take that from her.”

Nepeta was relatively easy to sway. Karkat wasn’t the only troll living under an expiration date and the semi-feral girl jumped at the chance to cause the Empire some degree of hurt. But her assistance was always a given—it was her blueblood moirail who was the problem.

“You can’t tell him, not yet,” Karkat warned over the voicecall. “If Equius catches wind of this too early, he’ll kill us all.”

“He wouldn’t, not if I asked him not to,” Nepeta argued fiercely, defending her moirail. “He isn’t stupid, Karkat! He wouldn’t endanger me.”

“But he absolutely would endanger the rest of us,” Karkat sighed. “Look, Nepeta, I trust you. I want you to join us and I want Equius to as well, but he’s the one I don’t trust.”

“Why not?” Nepeta asked, nearly growling. “He’s never done anything to you.”

“Oh, geez, let me think, Nepeta, maybe it’s because he’s a fucking hemocaste loyalist? Maybe because his thinkpan has been shoved full of highblood nonsense and bullshit since the day he fucking hatched?”

“It’s okay, you have the Heiress,” Nepeta shot back. “He’ll listen to her.”

And just like that, Karkat knew he had her. “Just you admitting that we need the Heiress’ royal blood to make sure he’s not a menace means you understand that he could be a very big problem.”

Silence from the other end of the line.

“I want to save him too,” Karkat swore to her. “But if we’re doing this, then we have to do it by what’s best for us and him which means he can’t know jack shit about any of this until this rebellion has grown too large for him to think he can solve it on his own, because if he thinks he can stop us to save you, he will.”

There was a pause, then another sigh. “And once there’s too much damage, once I’m too entertwined with the mechanics of the rebellion to ever be separated out from it, he won’t have a choice but to join to protect me.”

“Exactly,” Karkat told her. “Nepeta, hiding this from him doesn’t make you a shitty moirail. It means that you’re saving him, even if its from a fate he doesn’t necessarily think is a bad one. You’re acting in his best interest.”

“But it sounds so guilty,” Nepeta fretted. “I’ve never tried to keep anything from him before.”

“Then learn how to,” Karkat ordered. “And hey, sometimes secrets are for the best. At least this way we won’t have to give him the Tavros treatment.”

“Tavros treatment?” Nepeta asked, and even through a voice call Karkat could hear her tail twitching in amusement.

“Yeah, I know keeping this a secret would be way too much for him to handle. He’d give himself a nervous breakdown long before Ascension Day and that’s only if his nervousness doesn’t get him killed before then. It’s safer for him to remain in the light where he can’t accidentally fuck things up, and then I’ll just kidnap him when the time’s right. I’m sure he’ll thank me for it later.”

Her laugh was a hiss. “Devious.”

“It’s for the best,” Karkat reminded her. “Sometimes, to help people, you have to do what’s right for them even if they wouldn’t agree with it if they knew.”

“You’ve always known that better than most,” Nepeta told him, and then there was a clicking from the call line that signaled the approaching end. “I’m sorry about Gamzee. I know how badly you wanted to save him.”

The encroaching radiation made the words fuzzy but the knot tightened his throat so much that it was hard to speak past it. He hoped the static disguised the hurt in his tone. “Yeah, me too.”

The solar flare ate the line connection and the call ended. Feferi lounged in the doorway. “Kidnapping and secrets,” she said. “Is that how we want to plant our first flag?”

“We need to survive,” Karkat said, stressed. “Numbers come first. We can plot overthrows after we have trolls to carry out coups with.”

“Are you sure?” She asked, and Karkat wheeled around to face her.

“You’ve been listening in on me all night,” he challenged. “Aren’t you satisfied that I know what I’m fucking doing? I just won us four more trolls… plus Equius. Eventually.”

“Only two said yes,” Feferi lifted her lip at him in a silent snarl.

“Four plus Equius,” Karkat stated confidently. “Kanaya will come around, and we can snatch Tavros at any time towards the end.”

Feferi tittered. “You’ve mentioned that a few times now. What end?”

Karkat blinked at her. “There’s a pretty obvious timeline here,” he reminded her. “We need to be gone before Ascension Day, gone or strong enough to take every one of the ships they send to Alternia, which is fucking impossible, so realistically the only option is us very, very far away.”

“How will we get away?” Feferi asked. “I thought your plan didn’t have ships yet?”

“My plan is to say fuck my plan,” Karkat told her, grinning as he spun around in his chair. “I’ll never be smart or skilled enough to figure out even 1% of what we need to know to escape the planet and I’m mature enough to admit it. I don’t expect anyone else to be smart enough to figure any of this out either. The HIC trapped us here knowing that by the time we were old and smart enough to find a way out, Ascension Day would have come and gone and with it any hope of rebellion.”

Feferi twisted a strand of her thick hair around one horn, a nervous gesture he’d been quick to pick up on. “So what do we do?”

“I know a guy,” Karkat admitted. “I’m trusting with 100% confidence that he’ll have the sheer fucking brainpower to think a way out of this hellpit for us, plus invent a dozen other neat tricks to fuck the Empire over with just for shits and giggles.”

Feferi perked up, interested. “Let’s call him!”

“No.” Karkat powered his husktop down for the day, exhausted. “The sun’s up and he won’t answer a voicecall. The only way to reach him is through Trollian.”

“So we wait until nightbreak,” Feferi decided, excited.

“It’s not that simple,” Karkat told her. “This troll… it’s complicated.”

She cocked her head at him, a mix of bird and squid.

Karkat sighed as he answered her unasked inqury. “Sollux is the most dangerous troll on-planet,” he stated it as a fact. “And I want him on our side not just because he’s a fucking genius who I’m sure can singlehandedly think our way up to the stars like he’s gilded a red fucking carpet for us, but because at one point I was fucking blessed enough to call him my best friend and I’m NOT leaving him behind for the Empire to fuck over.”

Feferi might have been highblood with too much brine for brains in the place of common sense, but she didn’t push the story she heard untold there. “Is he dangerous to us?”

“More than I can fucking imagine,” Karkat sighed. He slapped the wall of the RO next to him. “This rusted slagheap won’t keep us safe if he finds out about us and decides to take action. He’ll kill us without ever leaving his hive. He won’t even need to get the Fleet involved. I’m not sure how he’d do it, but I know he already has a dozen different ways to end someone’s life from a distance and I trust him too much to ever think to call that fucking bluff.” Feferi’s gulp was audible. Karkat just stared at her. “You think hiding up here keeps the signal scrambled enough that the Fleet won’t find us and you might be right about that, but he’ll find us. And it’ll be easy for him.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “And you’re sure that contacting him is a good idea?”

“We can’t do this without him,” Karkat stressed. “Our escape doesn’t exist without him to create it. And I’m NOT leaving him behind.” Karkat snapped his jaws shut before he said too much. He’d failed Sollux once before. He wasn’t about to a second time. “You wanted me here, so trust in my decisions.”

“I thought you said trust was dangerous?”

“Not if it’s from me,” Karkat shot back. “Because I never fucking trust anyone, and I never will.”

...

Nightbreak. Karkat didn’t sleep that day. The sopor was too thin to keep the dayterrors off him and he was too stressed over what the new night would bring. He’d spent hours turning over different thoughts and plans in his head and discarding each one as a good way to get killed.

Sollux’s Trollian icon was inactive, but it always was. The fucker had programmed it to never show when he was online. The night was early too. Sollux might not wake up for hours, if he was sleeping at all. The goldblood’s famously fucked sleepcycle could only have gotten worse since Karkat last contacted him, and the hesitant pester he sent out should have gone untouched for hours.

He was wrong. Sollux answered him immediately.

carcinoGeneticist (CG) began Trolling twinArmageddons (TA)!

CG: I KNOW IT’S BEEN A WHILE AND YOU PROBABLY DON’T WANT TO TALK, BUT HEY, I’M STILL ALIVE.
CG: WHICH ISN’T AN EXCUSE AND SHOULD PROBABLY ONLY PISS YOU OFF MORE THAT IT’S BEEN SO LONG SINCE WE’VE TALKED, BUT I THOUGHT IT BORE MENTIONING.
TA: the fact of your text alone ii2 proof you’re not dead so mentiioniing iit liike iit2 2ome fuckiing miiracle ii2 2tupiid
TA: what do you want?
CG: LOOK, I’M NOT ABOUT TO DO THE OLD SONG AND DANCE OF ‘WHY, NOTHING! I JUST WANTED TO TALK WITH YOU’ BECAUSE WE BOTH KNOW THAT’S BULLSHIT AND WE BOTH DESERVE BETTER THAN THAT. ALSO YES, I DO NEED SOMETHING FROM YOU.
TA: why?
TA: why come two me? you 2hould know by now that ii don’t take hackiing commii22iion2 anymore, from pa2t friiend2 or not. iif iit2 2ome job offer, get fucked and fiind 2omeone el2e
CG: IT’S NOT A JOB OFFER OR A COMMISSION.
TA: ii cannot 2tress to you enough how much ii don’t care. You won’t bait me along with vauge half-an2wer2. 2piit iit out or 2hut the fuck up. ii’m bu2y
CG: BUSY WITH WHAT?
TA: none of your fuckiing bu2iine22 just get to the poiint already
CG: I CAN’T. THERE’S A GOOD CHANCE YOU’LL KILL ME FOR IT.

Sollux was too smart to not grasp the illegal nature of what Karkat was hinting at.

TA: …
TA: … ii cant tell iif youre beiing 2eriiou2
CG: I AM.
CG: BUT IF WE’RE TO PROCEED FROM THIS POINT I NEED TO GET TWO THINGS OUT OF THE WAY FIRST, BUT ONLY AFTER YOU DO A FAVOR FOR ME. IF EITHER ONE OF WHAT I HAVE TO SAY OFFENDS YOU TOO MUCH, THE FAVOR SHOULD GIVE YOU MORE THAN ENOUGH AMMUNITION TO END MY REGRETFUL EXISTANCE. DEAL?
TA: ii’ll biite but be warned iif thii2 ii2 2ome 2hiitty joke or prank, your a22 ii2 toa2t
CG: FINE. I ACCEPT YOUR TERMS. THE FAVOR IS THAT I WANT YOU TO TELL ME MY EXACT COORDINATES. I WILL OFFER NO HINTS EXCEPT TO SWEAR THAT I AM SEATED AT MY PERSONAL HUSKTOP AS I TROLL YOU.
TA: why 2take your liife on 2uch ea2y 2hiit? what2 your real goal?
CG: CAN YOU FIND ME OR NOT?
TA: yeah ii can fiind you. there’2 nowhere on-planet you can hiide a 2iignal from me.
TA: hold on

Karkat waited. A minute passed. Karkat could only image the degree of furious typing the goldblood was doing. Another minute passed.

He egged the troll on.

CG: WHAT’S WRONG? HAVING TROUBLE?
TA: 2hut up and hold 2tiill.
TA: how ii2 your 2iignal moving so fast? How ii2 iit thii2 2crambled?
TA: 2top 2hiittiing me riight the FUCK now
TA: you’re not on the planet. you’re iin low orbiit. Fuck, ii can 2ee whatever tiiny craft you’re probably crammed iin how the fuck did you get up there?
CG: YOU CAN SEE ME?
TA: ye2 ii have a drone 2atelliite hacked and poiinted riight at you

Karkat swallowed thickly. That took far less time than he’d thought it would, plus Sollux already had eyes on him, eyes borrowed from the Empire. He had to tread lightly.

CG: GOOD. YOU HAVE MY EXACT LOCATION. THIS IS MY GIFT TO YOU AS A SHOW OF TRUST.
TA: you’re actually iin orbiit.
TA: kk iif you popped up agaiin after over a 2weep of radiio 2iilence only two 2hove trea2on iin my fuckiing face, ii wiill ab2olutely murder you for iit
TA: we were friiend2 once. ii’m giiving you thii2 one chance to block my fuckiing number
CG: YOU’RE BEING MORE GENEROUS THAN MOST, AND I THANK YOU FOR THAT, BUT DON’T YOU WANT TO HEAR THOSE TWO POINTS I PROMISED YOU FIRST? YOU CAN ALWAYS KILL ME AFTERWARDS IF THAT’S WHAT YOU CHOOSE.
TA: fuck you fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
TA: FUCK,
TA: YOU.
CG: LISTEN VERY CLOSELY TO ME.
TA: fuck you karkat vantas

Karkat waited a few tense seconds. Nothing happened.

CG: SINCE I HAVE NOT BEEN BLOWN UP YET, I’M GOING TO TAKE YOUR INSULT AS AN INVITATION TO CONTINUE. FEEL FREE TO ANNIHILTE ME AT YOUR CONVENIANCE.
vCG: YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND TWO VERY IMPORTANT THINGS. THE FIRST IS THAT I HAVE /ALWAYS/ BEEN YOUR FRIEND. OUR FRIENDSHIP WAS REAL EVEN IF THE PAST SWEEP HAS STRAINED IT. I AM ONLY ACTING WITH YOUR BEST INTEREST IN MIND.
TA: what the fuck have you done?
CG: WAIT, I’M NOT DONE YET.
CG: I’VE BEEN KEEPING SOMETHING HIDDEN FROM YOU. FROM EVERYONE. AND ITS SO HUGE AND TERRIBLE THAT I DON’T KNOW HOW BEST TO COME OUT AND SAY IT SO INSTEAD I’M JUST GOING TO ASK YOU A SIMPLE QUESTION.
CG: SOLLUX, WHAT’S MY BLOODCOLOR?

The longest second Karkat had ever experienced crept by.

TA: ii don’t know. you never let anyone know and ii thought iit wa2 because you were ru2t and embarra22ed about iit but now you’re borderliine off-planet at 2even 2weeps old and that’2 hiighblood bull2hiit iif iive ever 2een iit fuck no wonder you were 2o comfortable makiing eye2 at the fuckiing juggalo
TA: viiolet then? You never 2tuck me a2 a 2eadweller but nothiing under viiolet ha2 that kiind of weiight two throw around
CG: I’M NOT A SEADWELLER. I’M NOT A HIGHBLOOD.
TA: then how the fuck—

Karkat switched off the controls he’d first learned hacking to force his profile to type as back when he was newly pupated. His artificial gray gave way to it’s true shade.

CG: SOLLUX, I’M RED.
CG: I’M A FUCKING OFF-SPECTRUM MUTANT FREAK. I DON’T HAVE A BLOODCASTE. I DON’T FIT IN THE HEMOSPECTRUM AT ALL. MY VERY EXISTANCE IS A VIOLATION OF ALTERNIAN LAW. I AM ILLEGAL ON ALL CONCEIVABLE LEVELS. JUST THE FACT THAT I’M ALIVE IS TREASON.

He had more to say, but nothing happened when he tried to type the words. His keyboard had frozen. He tried to move the cursor but it remained locked. He tried to shut the program off manually but it ignored him.

Karkat nervously looked out the portwindow, but if Sollux was sending death his way it’s not like he’d ever see it in time.

A window opened on the screen of his husktop unbidden, and a viewport was revealed.

Sollux’s face stared out at him. He’d always been a slim troll but his thin face was wasted now, his skin ashy, hair matted down with oil. Even his eyes looked dull, one red, one blue. The respiteblock behind him was destroyed, charred scars across the walls, deep gouges ripped into them, blackout curtains over one section where the night sky showed outside through the hole. Empty energydrink cans littered every surface, oozing with honey from the towers of silicomb that haphazardly leaned together like they were one blink away from collapsing and catching fire. The respiteblock was a disaster in the middle of either decomposing or self-immolating. Karkat couldn’t tell which.

It was such a pitiful sight that Karkat’s long-unused heart gave a painful squeeze, but the look on Sollux’s face wasn’t from a troll who’d given up on life just yet.

Sollux’s bi-colored eyes flashed. Sparks jumped off the ends of his twin horns as he stared Karkat down. “Prove it.”

“You hacked me,” Karkat accused, more than a little impressed. The radiation outside was supposed to prevent this.

The psionic hissed at him, baring the snaggle fangs that caused his lisp. “Prove it or I’ll kill you now.”

It was not an idle threat. Karkat knew plenty of trolls who’d tested the psionic’s wrath before and ended up either quietly vanished or so violently exploded that there wasn’t even a skeleton remaining once the fire died down.

Karkat’s bruises around his wrists from Eridan’s cords were healing a rusty color that wasn’t too different from proper rust, and he’d rather not rip the scabs off his healing scalp either, so he wordlessly pulled a sickle out of his sylladex. The curved blade shone in the low light.

His heart was pounding and he was pouring sweat. He’d never intentionally revealed this before, and the weight of the secret was choking him. The burden of Sollux’s watching eyes bored into him as Karkat readjusted his grip on the hilt and swiftly cut a line across his palm before he could back out. The resulting cut wasn’t deep but it was so clean-edged from how sharp Karkat kept his weapons that it took a few sluggish moments for the blood to show.

The light of the dying star was hidden behind the face of Alternia itself, and most of the available light came from his husktop screen and the faint buzz of the overhead inlays. It was more than enough to reveal the toxic crimson that oozed from his gray skin, thick as corruption, red as heresy itself. Karkat’s nutritionsack lurched at the sight; he couldn’t stand the shade of it, so he turned his palm towards his friend, completely wordless as the drops began to run down his wrist in ruby rivulets.

Sollux’s face started out hard and didn’t change as he studied the sight before him. The only difference was the single bare shitty light behind him, the only one left intact in the destroyed respiteblock, exploded with a dull fizz of fried electrics. Neither of them moved for a long minute.

Sollux was the first to break the spell. He crossed his thin arms over his chest and scowled. “This doesn’t explain how you’re off-planet.”

The break left him breathless. Sollux was giving him the chance to explain, he hadn’t immediately reacted with violence, maybe Karkat could make this okay. He quickly snatched his hand down, the color smearing across his skin as he hid the wound from sight. “Feferi found me,” he explained. “Feferi Peixes. It’s her Royal Orbitor I’m hiding in.”

Sollux’s lips twitched into something ugly. “So the Heiress is keeping you as a pet.” He stated it like it wasn’t a question, his voice dark. “How fucking generous of her.”

Karkat’s anger flared. “Don’t be an asshole,” he hissed. “This isn’t about the Empire.”

“I’d hope not,” Sollux said, sounding bored. “There’s more interesting ways to kill yourself than cozying up to the Heiress, especially for an off-spectrum freak like you.”

The insult hit but it didn’t sting like it should have, not even when from a troll Karkat still considered a friend. “Are you going to turn us in or not?” He demanded, claws prickling at his hurt palm as he wound cloth around it to bind it. “Knowing I’m alive and failing to act appropriately according to the law is treason. Knowing I exist and that I’m with the fucking Heiress, who also knows, is treason twice-over. If you don’t strike me down right now like I know you’re fully capable of, your life’s forfeit to the Fleet.”

A small muscle twitched near Sollux’s blue eye. “You did not reach out to me to commit suicide,” he stated. “Again, there are more interesting ways to kill yourself than that. Why did you contact me?”

It was almost a truce, or as close to one as Karkat dared to hope. “Because we both know that we’re doomed,” Karkat told him. “The Empire is going to kill us.”

“Feferi too,” Sollux mused, halfway thoughtful. “Is that your plan, then? Lump all the cullbaits together to make it easier for them?”

Karkat scowled at him, pissy. Sollux was too keen to keep missing the point like this. His misinterpretation was intentional, probably to force Karkat to come out and say it plainly. “The plan is to fuck the Empire over for ever daring to think that we’d die quietly.” It was treason beyond his bloodcolor. It was rebellion, stated plainly. It was enough ammo for the Fleet to dronestrike his exact location, enough proof for Sollux to buy his way to a painless death. “What do you say to that?”

Sollux’ eyes flashed, sparks popping in the air around him, more proof of the power the Empire would Helm him over. “I’d say fuck their fucking Empire.” Sollux considered him as Karkat grinned, fierce and vicious. “What’s the plan?”

“The plan is to have you come up with a working plan,” Karkat admitted. “We need a way to get off-planet with about ten trolls and every time I try to think my way through those kind of mental gymnastics I can feel my thinkpan blow a fucking gasket.”

Sollux laughed, the sound rusty but true. He brushed his hair out of his eyes and straightened up, literally rising to the problem. “Why ten?”

“That’s how many I plan to take with us before Ascension Day,” Karkat told him. “Small enough to get away unseen, enough of us to man whatever craft we end up with, but not enough to kill ourselves over either.” Karkat ran through the numbers in his head again, frowning when they didn’t add up. “It’s rebellion, full-scale. We start small, then more.”

Sollux considers his words. “What ten?”

Karkat answers plainly. “Me. you. Feferi and her moirail Eridan, Kanaya, Terezi, Nepeta and her moirail Equius, and Tavros.”

Sollux thinks it through. He doesn’t comment on how Karkat has listed the names of all of their old friendgroup in it’s entirety, minus two who wouldn’t hear the words rebellion without flipping murder, minus one who’d never get the chance to win back a little blood from the Empire that would have one day killed her too if circumstances had been different. “That’s only nine.”

“My plan was originally for twelve,” Karkat told him, voice flat. “But a lot changed in the last sweep and a half.”

The name Aradia sat heavily between them, the source of the pit Sollux has dug himself into, the reason why Karkat was too ashamed to talk to him for over a sweep. Gamzee’s betrayal had nearly killed Karkat, but the purpleblooded bastard was at least still breathing. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have a quadrantmate die, to wake from a betrayal, a violation of the highest degree, only to discover there’s not even enough of her left to put in the ground.

Sollux shifts slightly, coughing into his hand. The sound is sick, heavy. There’s a wheeze embedded in it. “Where were you?”

Karkat swallows thickly, his heart pounding.

Sollux continued tonelessly. “My matesprit died and you weren’t there. None of you were. Our group fell apart after that, after Tavros and Terezi and Vriska, fucking Vriska, and yet somehow Aradia was the only one who got killed.” He scrubbed at his eyes, his fangs in a pained grimace that made Karkat want to reach through the screen and comfort him, and that was such a terrifying fucking feeling that he shut that shit down quickly. Sollux chuckled mirthlessly. “At least now I know why you were so against playing games with us.”

“Sollux—”

“Don’t,” Sollux hissed, and his eyes flashed, nearly glowing. “It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have stopped it.”

Karkat choked back his next words. He’d warned her; they all had, but he’d underestimated Vriska’s cruelty and drive to win, no matter the cost. It hadn’t even been Sollux’s fight—he’d been the collateral, nothing but a hijacked mind manipulated into something he’d never forgive himself for.

Karkat wanted to comfort him, to reassure him with words it wasn’t his place to say so he shut his lips and bore it silently, his emotions out of whack with the reality that Sollux very well might kill him still.

Sollux gritted his fangs, biting back his next words until he’d regained control of himself. “How long have you been planning this?”

“Since the beginning,” Karkat admitted. “Though it was only recently I started believing in it again.”

“And we have until Ascension Day?” Sollux asked to confirm. “Damn, kk, you know how to give a troll a deadline. Do you even have a ship or an idea for a ship?”

“No.”

“What about any specs of what we’ll need? A destination? A way to hide from the Fleet?”

“No.”

“What about life support systems? Weapons? The logistics for a plan after we escape?”

“Not a clue.”

Sollux’s eyes gleamed with challenge as he considered the mental math of the issue. Every time Karkat told him he’s got jack shit was another upward tick in Sollux’s brain. The psionic grinned. “Equius is an engineer and roboticist, right?” He asked slowly. “A skilled one too. And I’m sure Feferi and this Eridan guy can bankroll whatever I need. I’ll need hands too. Isn’t Kanaya good with her hands? Terezi to keep the books right and nosey trolls off my back while I work.” He outlined his goal, the plan taking shape as he spoke it to life. Sollux leaned back, his eyes narrowed. His fingers tapped at nothing like he was already itching to begin.

“Plan it out first,” Karkat told him. “I can send Kanaya and Terezi your way but Equius will take time.”

Sollux scoffed. “The thickheaded idiot’s a bloodcaste bigot,” he said. “I’d be surprised if that one agreed to anything more disloyal than having Nepeta as a moirail.”

Karkat laughed bitterly. “Let me work on that one,” he told the troll, tapping at his frozen keyboard. “I plan on kidnapping Tavros towards the end. I can kidnap Equius too if I don’t think he’ll fall into line.”

Sollux thought it over then shrugged. “Tavros’d thank you for it later.”

“That’s what I figured too,” Karkat sighed.

Sollux is silent for a moment. “What about your ex?”

Karkat froze. “Gamzee is…” He trailed off, because what could he say? If it had been an ordinary breakup, Karkat would have moved mountains to get him back, to save him from the Empire, but—“He saw my bloodcolor. It’s safe to assume he’s an Empire loyalist beyond the reach of reason.”

Sollux hissed his breath in through his teeth. “Holy shit, Karkat, I had no idea.”

Karkat shrugged. The movement was small and miserable but he bit back everything else until when he spoke it was calm and collected. “Rebellions lead to war, Sollux. We won’t be able to save them all.”

Sollux just looked at him with exhausted eyes too bright and hectic for sleep.

Karkat sighed. “You’re taking this surprisingly well.”

Sollux’s shrug mirrored his own. “I have absolutely nothing to lose and a thousand reasons why I want to watch the Empire burn.” The strong words don’t match the unaffected visual. “I was planning a kind of blaze of fiery glory last stand when the drones came for me, but I like this plan better.”

Karkat snorted, grinning. He’d missed talking to this troll. He’d missed Sollux.

“Wire me everything you have so far,” Sollux orders. “Don’t worry about security—I’ll make it safe. I’ll set up a line between us not even Fleet encrypterrorgramists can’t crack.”

“I know,” Karkat smiled. “Just stay safe for now, okay? We can wreck their shit once we’re off-planet.”

Sollux’s answering grin was a things of dayterrors. It’s an expression Karkat hoped will haunt the Empire from here on out. “Deal.”

37 Perigees Remaining until Ascension Day.

 

It was slow going. Karkat abandoned the RO, which while somewhat safe wasn’t capable of supporting more than two at a time, plus Sollux wanted the pod itself delivered to his hive, eventually, for study so he can pick apart all the ways it works and how he can best improve it the fastest.

Which jumpstarted the strangest period of Karkat’s life.

Within a few perigees he’d gone from never having met one of his friends in person to speedrunning his way through most of them. He visited Nepeta first, carefully planning to arrive when Equius wasn’t there, and together they went over the plan and he gave her the uplink drive that would connect her securely to Sollux’s private server. He then left her cavehive behind for the sandwastes.

The sandwastes absolutely sucked. It was a sweltering, gritty experience he never wished to repeat.

Kanaya didn’t actually agree to see him at all. She’d blocked him on Trollian, and Karkat nearly died wandering around the desert, fighting off lone daywalkers until he found her hive and broke in to find her waiting for him with a cup of grubtea in one hand and a chainsaw in the other. Karkat gave her the uplink too, but she didn’t promise to join even if she swore she won’t oppose them. Karkat left with a grin because he knew he had her even if she insisted on being stubborn about it. She’d accepted the uplink, after all.

It was lots of nights spent hitching rides in scuttlebuggies, once buying passage across a ravine from a oliveblood girl and her scaly cliffcrawler lusus, dodging highbloods and roving circuses like the plague, dressed in a trailing cloak that Kanaya made him with the hood drawn up around his face. He’d never walked so much in his life, and after a wrigglerhood spent locked inside his hive, traveling and seeing the world he’d grown up in was bittersweet.

Karkat headed towards the southern forests, intent on finding his oldest friend.

Terezi attacked him on sight and didn’t stop until she’d drawn blood from his neck with her dragoncane, nearly beheading him in the process. It was a brutal, flashy attack made all the more deadly by the fact that the blind troll was a true expert in bladekind.

She licked her swordcane clean and laughed at Karkat’s horrified expression before offering him a hand to pull him up from off the ground to crush him in an embrace. In a way, the greeting went exactly as expected.

He didn’t visit Tavros. It would only cause problems. But he did take to trolling him regularly to keep their friendship strong and hopefully cause him not to freak the fuck out so bad when it was time to kidnap him.

He stayed with Sollux in-between running errands and pulling strings for their fledgling rebellion. Feferi had gone into the wind to stay out of trouble and Eridan went with her to take care of any problems they might run into. With Gamzee knowing his old hive’s location and no lusus, it was too dangerous for Karkat to stay around his old stomping grounds. Rooming with the most powerful psionic on-planet, possibly ever, was a damn good self-defense strategy. It’s not like anything less deadly than an actual laughassassin would even get close to the goldblood.

That did not make things easy for Karkat. Quite the opposite, actually.

Sollux was… kind of a waking daymare. Karkat didn’t see much of him in the beginning and the goldblood snarled at him on sight whenever he interrupted Sollux’s ‘work’ which ranged from him doing nothing but staring at the slowly molding ceiling to staying awake at his husktop for nights at a time, surviving solely off the honey that leaked from his walls of silicomb. He’d moved out of his hivestem after losing his lusus, and his new hive was secluded, private, and absolutely falling apart. It was all Karkat could do to keep the roof patched enough to keep the daylight out during the bi-lunar light season and the rain out during the following dark season. It was a dreary few perigees.

Sollux clearly didn’t care for his company either. The psionic was a prickly bastard at the best of times and Karkat was confrontational enough to bullheadedly stomp his way into each of the psionic’s verbal barbs until they’re both left screaming at each other. It would almost feel black if it wasn’t so fucking miserable.

It’s not even a good kind of anger Karkat felt when he looked at the apathetic goldblood. There was no urge to sink in his claws and pull the bastard up from out of his own self-loathing and thrash him for ever letting things get this bad. If there had been, Karkat would have been okay with it. He’d have understood feeling pitch when the shithead threw spade barbs at him like they were on sale, but each insult caused his anger to mix with pity, and Karkat didn’t want to beat the other troll into submission so that he can watch him build himself back up again, no, it was far worse than that.

When Karkat caught Sollux blinking at the screen with eyes that were weeping from how long it’d been since he’d last slept, when he started losing weight from how manic he’d let himself become, forgoing food in favor of problem solving a question that he himself had asked, Karkat didn’t feel like this grief squatting in his chest could ever be pitch.

Karkat thought he’d seen trashfire trolls before. Hell, he nearly collected them at this point. All of his friends and fellow escapees had more than a little dash of chronically insane behavior. Karkat didn’t even kid himself about being an exception to this rule—he knew he was fucked up. Their culture required this hiveshit mindset as a reason for survival. He’d watched Nepeta eat a squeakbeast raw. He’d seen Terezi kill someone who doubleparked in the name of justice. He’d even attempted to placate a sopor-addicted highblood for two sweeps but not even Gamzee had been this frighteningly unbalanced. Maybe that was why Karkat never looked at him and saw a rival.

Sollux was a fucking disaster of a troll, pity bait like something out of some shitty two-bit pale flick, and when Karkat found him curled in the corner of his respitblock after giving himself a migraine so bad that he’d thrown up bile from the pain of it, Karkat didn’t feel like he could beat goodness into the fucked-up troll. He didn’t feel like Sollux would ever let him try.

But Gamzee and Sollux were not the same. If Gamzee got too fucked up he’d simply go out and start massacring any troll dumb enough to wander into his line of sight. If Sollux got too fucked up, Karkat was fairly sure the troll would simply kill himself. He looked halfway there already, and he’d thrown enough half-true implications at Karkat that he didn’t doubt outright suicide was off of Sollux’s list.

The thought of losing the troll to himself was unacceptable, but being outside of a quadrant left Karkat’s hands tied.

Out of desperation, he messaged Kanaya.

carcinoGeneticist (CG) began Trolling grimAuxilatrix (GA)!

CG: KANAYA? I’M NOT SURE IF WE’RE ON SPEAKING TERMS OR IF YOU’D RATHER SHIT LIQUID FIRE THAN TALK WITH ME AFER I DRAGGED YOU INTO THIS, BUT IF YOU’D ALLOW ME TO I’D LIKE TO MAKE SOMETHING ELSE YOUR PROBLEM.
CG: AND I MEAN THAT IN THE NICEST POSSIBLE WAY BECAUSE YOU ARE THE NICEST POSSIBLE TROLL I KNOW.
CG: ALSO OUR LIVES ARE AT STAKE BUT WHEN ARE THEY NOT? I DON’T FEEL LIKE LIFE-THREATENING DANGER COUNTS AS A PROPER MOTIVATOR ANYMORE SO I HAVE DEGRADED MYSLEF DOWN TO THE LEVEL OF ASKING NICELY.
CG: I HAVE A PROBLEM. I WOULD LIKE YOUR ADVICE ON HOW BEST TO HANDLE MY PROBLEM.
CG: HOLY SHIT ASKING NICELY FEELS WORSE THAN I THOUGHT. I’M GOING TO HAVE TO GARGLE SPOILED SOAPSLIME AFTER THIS TO GET RID OF THE TASTE.
GA: Is Being Nice To Me Really So Bad?
CG: NO, NOT WHEN ITS YOU. I JUST LIKE BEING AN OVERDRAMATIC BITCH ABOUT THE LESS IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF MY LIFE WHERE I CAN AFFORD A LITTLE FUCKING BREAK FROM BEING SUCH A BADASS ALL OF THE TIME.
GA: So Your Problem Is Of The ‘Not So Important’ Category But Important Enough For You To Reach Out In Hope Of Mining My Wisdom?
CG: IT’S IMPORTANT ENOUGH.
CG: I AM EXTREMLY CONCERNED ABOUT OUR PLAN’S EVENTUAL SUCCESS. I.E, US MAKING IT OFF-PLANET.
GA: Has There Been An Issue That Needs Addressing? And Why Do You Think My Expertise Is Needed? I Freely Admit I’m Not One Of Those Trolls Much Taken With Skill In The Computer Arts.
CG: RELAX IT’S NOT A CODING ISSUE.
CG: BUT IT’S KIND OF A SENSITIVE SUBJECT. IT GOES BEYOND THE BOUNDS OF NON-QUADRANTED TROLLS SO I’M NOT SURE HOW BEST TO BRING IT UP WITH YOU WITHOUT IT SEEMING LIKE I’M COMING ONTO YOU. IN A PALE WAY.
CG: JUST TYPING THAT MAKES ME WANT TO PROJECTILE EMPTY MY BILE SACK. I WANT TO MAKE IT CLEAR THAT I AM HAVING NO ROMANTIC FEELINGS TOWARDS YOU IN ANY CAPACITY. I’M LITERALLY JUST THAT MUCH OF A DESPERATLY SHITTY FRIEND WITH NO ONE ELSE TO TURN TO.
CG: AND I MEAN THAT PLATONICALLY!
GA: …
GA: Would I Be Right In Assuming This Is A Quadrant-Related Issue You’re Having? Or Is It A Different Sort Of Emotional Conundrum You’re Experiencing?
CG: OKAY WOW YOU’RE ACTUALLY PLAYING ALONG AND NOT BLOCKING ME? HOLY FUCK.
GA: Focus. I’ll Hear You Out But If I Begin To Feel Uncomfortable I Will Make Due Of The Block Button And Simply Click Your Trollhandle Out Of My Life.
CG: UNDERSTOOD.
CG: OKAY. LET ME THINK.
CG: IT’S HONESTLY HARD TO SAY? MAYBE BOTH?
CG: I’M WORRIED ABOUT SOLLUX.
GA: Worried?
CG: AS IN, MORE WORRIED THAN I THINK AN AVERAGE FRIEND WOULD BE.
GA: Worried In A Pale Way?
CG: … POTENTIALLY?
CG: PUT YOUR FINGERS DOWN! DELETE WHATEVER SAPPY BULLSHIT YOU JUST TYPED OUT ABOUT ‘CONGRADULATIONS’ OR WHATEVER ELSE RAGESHIT RAVES MOST TROLLS SAY WHEN FACED WITH A POSSIBLE MATCHUP.
CG: WE ARE /NOT/ RINGING DIAMONDS YET!
GA: I’m Guessing This Is The Dilemma, Isn’t It? You’re Feeling Pale Stirrings For Him But Don’t Want To Act On Them?
CG: FUCK, IT SUNDS SO SIMPLE WHEN YOU SAY IT LIKE THAT BUT NO. IT’S NOT THAT I DON’T WANT TO ACT ON THEM, MORE LIKE I DON’T THINK IT’S MY PLACE TO STEP IN. FOR REASONS I’LL BE LEAVING INTENTIONALLY UNSPECIFIED.
GA: You Eluded To The ‘Get Off-Planet’ Plan Being In Jeopardy And Expressed Worry For Sollux, The Troll In Charge Of Creating The Success Of Such A Plan. Are The Two Linked?
CG: YEAH, AND THAT’S THE PROBLEM, ISN’T IT?
GA: Could These Pale Feelings Stem From Your Incessant Urge To Fix Everyone And See Doom Where None Lies? I’m Sure It Can’t Be Nearly That Dire.
CG: NO, JUST NO. BUT ALSO, YES?
CG: KANAYA, I AM WORRIED THAT SOLLUX IS GOING TO KILL HIMSELF. EITHER KILL HIMSELF OR BE SUCH A FUCKING DISASTER THAT NO PLAN GETS MADE AND WE ALL FUCKING DIE.
CG: SO THE REAL DILEMMA IS NOT WETHER OR NOT I CARE, IT’S IF I’M CARING FOR THE RIGHT REASONS. BECAUSE BY THE HORRORTERRORS THEMSELVES, THIS FUCKING TROLL IS GOING TO DIE WITHOUT A MOIRAIL. AND IF HE DIES, WE ALL DIE.
CG: IT IS AN EXTREMLY DIRE SITUATION.
GA: On A Scale Of One To Ten, How Dire Are You Talking?
CG: ELEVEN. I WOULDN’T BE TOO SURPRISED TO HEAR A THE METAPHORICAL EQUIVALENT OF A LONE LASERSHOT RING OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY, FOLLOWED BY A SUSPICIOUS SILENCE.
CG: KANAYA, I WOULD NOT REACH OUT TO YOU IF I THOUGHT I HAD ANOTHER CHOICE.
GA: As Grateful As I Am That You’ve Trusted Me Like This, I’m Not Sure Why You’re Torn Up Over It. The Solution Seems Simple. If Diamonds Are Required To Both Preserve His Life And Ensure The Success Of The Plan, Why Not Contact Nepeta? Even Though I’m Not The Quadrant Expert She Is, Even I See The Correct Path Here.
GA: Pacify Him. Calm Him. Make Him Settle.
CG: YOU’RE TELLING ME TO PILE HIM? SOLLUX? THE DEADLIEST MOST PESSIMISTIC TROLL ALIVE?
GA: In Not Such Vulgar Terms, Yes.
CG: BUT—
GA: No Buts! Are You Pale For Him? From The Degree Of Concern I’m Getting From You I’m Leaning In The Direction Of Yes.
CG: OKAY, FAIR, BUT
GA: Does He Feel The Same? Does He Seem Amenable To A Pale Relationship At All?
CG: I DON’T FUCKING KNOW! HE KEEPS HISSING PITCH COME-ONS AT ME BUT I THINK THAT’S JUST HIS DEFAULT SETTING? IT’S LIKE HE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT OR HOW TO FEEL SO EVERYTHING COMES OUT AS ANGER. IT MAKES IT HARD FOR ME TO JUDGE WHERE’S HE’S AT RECIPROCALLY.
CG: WHICH IS KINDA FUCKING IMPORTANT BECAUSE I’M SURE IF I TRY ANY PALE MOVES ON HIM AND HE DOESN’T FEEL THE SAME WAY HE’LL MURDER ME ON THE SPOT.
CG: AND I LIKE MY FACE NOT LASERED OFF.
GA: Have You Spoken To Him At All About Any Kind Of Self-help Or Emotional Support?
CG: DID YOU GET THOSE WORDS OUT OF SOME KINKY DIAMOND PORNFLICK? HOW THE SHIT DO YOU EVEN KNOW THOSE PHRASES?
GA: You Are Not The Only Troll Who Tried And Failed To Calm Their Pale Partner, Karkat. Aradia’s Death Is As Much My Fault As It Is Hers. I’d Rather Not See Another Friend Of Ours Become Lost When A Stable Moirallegiance Could Have Preserved Them, Especially When It’s Sollux, Who Suffered The Most From My Failure As A Moirail.
GA: But Just In Case, Don’t Repeat My Mistakes. Ask Nepeta For Advice. She Would Be More Than Eager To Assist You And Her Quadrant Knowledge Far Outranks My Paltry Own.
CG: YEAH, I’VE SEEN HER SHIPPING CHARTS. I’D ALMOST BE IMPRESSED IF I WASN’T SO FUCKING TERRIFIED.
GA: I Understand The Sentiment. Out Of All Of Us She Was The Only One Who Correctly Predicted Feferi And Eridan Would Settle Pale. I Rather Thought They’d Vacillate The Other To Death.
CG: NO KIDDING. EVEN I DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HOW THOSE TWO WORKED THEMSELVES OUT, JUST THAT IT INVILVED THEM BEING LOCKED ABOARD THE ROYAL ORBITOR FOR A HALF-SWEEP WITH ZERO ROOM TO SO MUCH AS GET OUT OF EACH OTHERS BREATHING SPACE. ANY TROLL WITH A FUNCTIONING THINKPAN WOULD HAVE PREDICTED OUTRIGHT MURDER UNDER THOSE CIRCUMSTANCES.
GA: Any Yet Now They’re A Picture Perfect Pair Of Diamonds.
CG: IT’S NAUSEATINGLY SAPPY. WHAT’S WORSE IS THEY ACTUALLY MAKE A PRETTY GREAT PAIR WHEN THEY WORK TOGETHER. I NEVER WOULD HAVE BELIEVED IT.
GA: Perhaps The Same Might One Night Be Said Of You And Sollux?
CG: LET’S NOT GET OVERZELOUS HERE. WRIGGLER STEPS, YOU KNOW?
CG: THANK YOU FOR PUTTING UP WITH MY ERRANT NAGGING ABOUT TOPICS NOT APPROPRIATE FOR CIVIL CONVERSATION. I’LL MAKE A GOSSIP TROLL OUT OF YOU YET.
GA: It’s Bold Of You To Assume I Don’t Head The Memoboard That Keeps Track Of Your More Neurotic Rants For The Public Enjoyment Of Our Collective Friend Group.
CG: HOLD ON A SECOND, WHAT THE FUCK?
GA: Remember To Troll Nepeta Sooner Rather Than Later.
CG: WHAT FUCKING MEMOBOARD?!?! KANAYA YOU NOOKCHAFING TRAITOR!

grimAuxiliatrix (GA) has blocked carciniGeneticist (CG)!

CG: I’M ACTUALLY A LITTLE IMPRESSED. WHAT THE FUCK HAS MY LIFE BECOME?

Karkat blocked her just so that Kanaya would receive the blocked notification, then immediately unblocked her. He was petty but not stupid. One of them needed a clean line of communication.

It took him another few hours to screw up enough courage to troll Nepeta, only to find that Kanaya must have beaten him to it because the oliveblood had already sent him a solid block of green text.

arsenicCatnip (AC) has begun Trolling carcinoGeneticist (CG)!

AC: :33 < a little featherflappur told me you were having quadrant difficulties! katkat i’m so excited this is purfect!
AC: :33 < tell me everything! i want to kmeow all of the little details so that i can best offer my expurtise and advice as well as update my shipping chart! i knew that you were destined to find another diamond with us after what happened with smelly grapeface. i knew that failure couldn’t k33p you down fur furever.
CG: THE FACT OF MY ROMANTIC WOES SHOULD NOT GIVE YOU THIS MUCH PLEASURE.
CG: LET ME GUESS, THE FEATHERFLAPPER WHO SLIPPED MY QUADRANT-BASED SECRETS TO YOU WAS JADE IN COLOR. A NOSEY, MEDDLESOME JADE.
AC::33 < i’ll never tell! a propur shippur k33ps her claws to herself.
CG: … DID SHE AT LEAST TELL YOU THE GHIST OR DO I NEED TO SUBMIT MYSELF TO THE GRUESOME EXPERIENCE OF EXPLAINING MYSELF FOR A SECOND TIME?
AC: :33 < she told me the basics, and some things i can assume on my own.
CG: ASSUME? AH SHIT HERE WE GO.
AC: :33 < fear not! as your chosen shipping expurt all of my advice is clear, concise, and confidential! do you really think you’re the first to come to me when they find themselves in a bind? karkat, i am a professional.
AC: :33 < look, i’m so serious i’m not even roleplaying with you! which is purtty dangerous considering the fact that my moirail is here and it’s entirely possible that he might attempt to read this over my shoulder.
AC::33 < i’m telling him that i’m trying to bait you into roleplay. if i break professionalism to roleplay, assume our conversation is no longer private and reply in turn please!
CG: THAT’S A RIDICULOUS REQUEST!
AC::33 < so is your insistence that we k33p him out of the rebellion plan until the end of the sw33p! i kmeow my pale partner, karkat. fur all that he’s a sweaty dunderhead, he’s not actually a bad troll. i wish you would give him and me more credit.
CG: I’M NOT GOING TO RISK ALL OF OUR LIVES ON HIM AND HIS ASS-BACKWARDS BLOODCASTE IDEALISM.
AC::33 < the mighty huntress stalks through the long grass, her eyes fixed on her prey
CG: NEPETA, PLEASE.
AC: :33 < she sinks her claws into the dirt, purparing to pounce.
CG: KARKAT CANNOT BELIEVE THAT HE IS DOING THIS. KARKAT CANNOT UNDERSTAND WHAT GREAT CRIME HE HAS COMMITTED IN HIS SHORT, MISERABLE LIFE THAT WOULD CONDONE THIS KIND OF SUFFERING. KARKAT KIND OF WANTS TO BITE OFF HIS OWN FINGERS FOR TYPING OUT THE PREVIOUS TWO SENTANCES!
AC: :33 < s33, was that so bad? i just wanted to s33 you say it.
CG: FUCK, AND I MEAN THIS BOTH AS KINDLY AS POSSIBLE AND AS DEROGITIVE AS I FEEL THE SITUATION REQUIRES, YOU.
AC: :33 < next time, don’t insult my moirail and i won’t have to furce you into impromptu roleplay. deal?
CG: HE’S NOT ACTUALLY THERE, IS HE?
AC::33 < NOPE!
CG: MOTHERFUCKER.
AC: :33 < you make this too easy for me.
AC: :33 < meow, back to your own issues! it’s diamonds then, fur sollux?
CG: ARE YOU EVEN SURPRISED? THERE’S NO WAY YOU’RE ACCURATE ENOUGH TO SHIP ALL OF US CORRECTLY. FEFERI AND ERIDAN WERE A FLUKE, RIGHT?
AC: :33 < wrong! kanaya can attest that i’ve had you and sollux down pale since the start of the plan! i even purdicted that he’d try to start black and get you all confused about it!
CG: YOU’VE GOTTA BE FUCKING KIDDING ME…
AC: :33 < karkat! look, i am going to cut the shit with you. do you think you’re the only troll here who actually kmeows and understands everyone else in our group? do you think your eye fur making everyone work together was a one-off event?
AC: :33 < i s33 and understand everything that goes on betw33n us, clade or not, and i have b33n doing this fur sw33ps! if you only knew the crises i have averted by intervening when n33ded to k33p our friendgroup alive. you’re not the only troll who cares about their friends, karkat! i only want to help everyone be happy.
AC: :33 < and with your plan to get us all off-planet, fur the first time ever i finally think that we can do it! we can be happy!
CG: WHAT DO YOU MEAN? YOU CAN’T HAVE SHIPPED ALL OF US, RIGHT? COULD YOU? DID YOU?
AC::33 < you’re still not thinking about this right. no one ever does.
AC::33 < i might have once had a chart made fur all twelve of us. a much younger me had a system planned that was supposed to k33p us all together and okay.
AC::33 < but it didn’t work, did it, and it was never going to. we lost aradia and gamz33 and vriska and even that wasn’t the problem! every troll thinks shipping is such an underrated job but that’s never b33n true!
CG: WHAT DO YOU MEAN?
AC::33 < let’s say that i was the shippur fur a different group of trolls, just as individualistic and insane as our own with the single exception being that none of them were cullbait and all were scheduled to survive ascension day and find lives within the fl33t. what happens next?
CG: UH, THEY LIVE?
AC: :33 < karkat… shipping is a lie.
CG: WHAT?!?!?!?
AC: :33 < shipping is the incredibly difficult task of bringing together trolls in order to make our society function. alternian culture cannot continue without excellent shippurs like me pulling the strings to make sure we don’t all kill each other and can find partners in time to survive the drones. that is the first true statement. the second is that none of that freaking matters!
CG: WAIT, I GET THAT WE NEED TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE SLURRY FOR THE NEXT BATCH OF GRUBS ON PAIN OF DEATH AND THAT HAVING MOIRAILS HELPS THE MORE UNBALANCED HIGHBLOODS OR WHATEVER STAY SANE ENOUGH TO PARTICIPATE IN SOCIETY BUT ISN’T THAT THE POINT? ISN’T THAT WHY SHIPPING MATTERS? BECAUE WE WILL LITERALLY DIE WITHOUT IT?
AC::33 < karkat, the fl33t does not uphold quadrants—it destroys them.
CG: I DON’T UNDERSTAND. THAT SEEMS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE.
AC::33 < do one really gets it until it’s too late.
AC::33 < karkat, what happens to a flush pair once they survive ascension day? what happens to a pitch pair? what about diamonds who grew up together and kept each other alive?
CG: THEY JOIN THE FLEET.
AC: :33 < and the fl33t destroys them. a rustblood and a purpleblood. an oliveblood and a seadweller. a pair of pitch bluebloods—it doesn’t matter! the fl33t will put them on separate ships and they will never s33 each other ever again. not a single quadrant gets to stay together, not even moirails. trolls never s33m to think about this fact and i don’t understand why.
CG: WHAT? THEY SEPARATE US? PERMANENTLY?
AC: :33 < the purpose of ascension day isn’t just to cull the new generation and get them sorted into the fold, it’s to start the next one as well. we’re the source of the next generation of trolls, us and us alone. that’s why the fl33t commands us to find red and black partners in time. the logistics of flying in slurry from the fl33t is a joke when partners are separated by solar leaps and haven’t s33n each other in the flesh is a dozen sw33ps. and they push us having pale and ash partners beclaws we n33d to learn enough moderation and self-control to be useful to the empire without killing every troll who gives us an order.
AC::33 < it’s all a sham, always has b33n. the fl33t orders us together just to break us apart, and it suits them to do so. the hic doesn’t want a troll more loyal to their moirail then they are to the empire. she doesn’t want anyone who cares fur someone else enough to refuse an order. she doesn’t want to let us have another troll to live fur when we’re all supposed to die fur her.
AC::33 < soldiers. that’s all she’s after. and you’d better bet the seadwellers k33p tabs on who was with who on-planet so they always have a head to put on a pike if n33d be. it’s blackmail. it’s revenge. it’s a rope to hang us with if we ever dream of the stars without the hic’s face in them.
AC::33 < befure you approached me with your escape plan… karkat, i was just hoping to beat enough common sense into equius so that he wouldn’t roll over fur the first troll to push him around. i just wanted him steady and confident enough to survive without me there to hold his hand.
AC::33 < befure you approached me with your escape plan, i thought that feferi and eridan’s beautiful serendipitous relationship would be fur nothing. i thought my fractured shipping chart was useless beclaws it wasn’t going to matter much in the end, was it? my goal was to k33p everyone alive that i could until ascension day and then just… hope fur the best? that’s bullshit! that’s bullshit that the best thing i could do to k33p my friends safe was didn’t matter the instant the ships touch the ground.
AC::33 < that is what shippurs do. we k33p our friends alive fur long enough to get to live alone furever. no wonder the deathrate fur first-generation fl33t trolls is nearly 65% after one sw33p. it’s an emotionally-driven killzone fr33furall fur trolls who just lost absolutely everything they ever had and ever knew.
CG: FUCK ME, YOU’RE RIGHT. YOU’RE EXACTLY RIGHT, HOLY SHIT.
CG: WHAT THE FUUUUUUUCK! IT’S ALL HER PLAN, ISN’T IT? ALWAYS HAS BEEN.
CG: JUST WHEN I THOUGHT ALTERNIAN CULTURE COULDN’T GET ANY MORE FUCKED UP.
AC::33 < but meow you want to put nine trolls together on a ship with the chance of not only staying together but having all of us get along and not flip murder at the first sign of stuggle?
AC::33 < it’s more than a dream come true. i never wanted to give equius up to the fl33t. i never wanted to s33 what they would have done to him.
CG: I CAN SYMPATIZE WITH THAT. DID YOU, BEFORE,
CG: DID YOU EVER THINK ME AND GAMZEE WOULD HAVE BEEN OKAY? WOULD WE HAVE EVER BEEN GOOD DIAMONDS FOR EACH OTHER?
AC: :33 < … i thought so. i wasn’t even surprised when you came out as partners. i thought you’d be purfect fur each other. karkat, i was so happy fur you.
CG: …
CG: WHERE DID I GO WRONG?
AC::33 < i… i made that match fur you when i was missing infurmation on a vital aspect of the match’s survival. i did not factor in gamz33’s potential reaction to a betrayal of the kind that happened, much like i underestimated vriska’s drive to win over the safety of trolls who were inclade to her.
CG: BUT I NEVER BETRAYED HIM? I NEVER LIED TO HIM AT ALL, TO HIM OR ANY OF YOU. AND VRISKA WAS JUST A SELFISH BITCH. THAT’S NOT YOUR FAULT THAT TEREZI AND HER DIDN’T WORK AS SPADES.
AC: :33 < let’s… lets get back to the ship at paw, okay? i’ve had enough of reflecting on past failures. i won’t fail again, i kmeow better meow. plus i kmeow my friends more so than i did befure. i can make better matches fur us. matches that will last.
AC: :33 < so, tell me everything about you and sollux! then i’ll come up with a plan.
CG: ARE YOU SURE? I DON’T THINK WE’LL BE AN EASY MATCH TO MAKE.
AC: :33 < nonsense! Let’s begin.

...

Nepeta had told him to test the waters and scout out how reciprocal Sollux may be to a pale relationship with him but the goldblooded bastard made such a task impossibly difficult when he swung wildly between disorganized mania and a depression so deep it’d crush any seadweller, flinging his stupid little pitch remarks at Karkat like a warning banner screaming ‘this one bites’.

Not that Sollux particularly needed help looking completely fucking terrifying. The twin-horn mutation marked him as a fair psionic at first glance, the intrinsic ability manifesting so strong that his horn count doubled as a result, a clear warning to all unfortunate enough to lay eyes on him that Sollux was deadly. He was rail-thin and under muscled but moved with that special brand of shitty self-confidence that said he didn’t need physical skill to stay alive. His entire physique broadcasted to other trolls ‘don’t fucking mess with me’, plus his literal genius skill with anything involving husktops made him an automatic hatestud for whatever highblooded ringleader was dumb enough to think they might match him in rivalry. After all of that bullshit his eyes were overkill.

One sapphire eye blue enough to make a blueblood jealous, one red as the dusk, both glazed over with so much psionic energy that the troll’s yellow sclera, normal irises, and pupils were completely obscured beneath the glow of power as one last warning that this troll was fucking deadly, both eyes literally oozing psionics even when at rest like something Alternia hadn’t seen in a hundred sweeps. Any sane troll would have run screaming.

And yet for all of this mental power burning through the goldblood’s thinkpan, Sollux was such a fucking mess! It almost made Karkat resentful to see a troll so naturally gifted at survival squander himself like this. If he wanted to, Karkat was sure Sollux could have been running the entire planet, easy. But instead Sollux was squatting in an abandoned hive, slowly crushing himself under the weight of himself, and Karkat never saw a rival in that disaster for all that Sollux tried to bait him into something black.

It was pathetic, and that realization is what started the mess Karkat was in because the only troll who could take the psionic out was himself. Sollux was his own biggest enemy. Karkat understood that. He knew what it was like to hate his own existence.

If Karkat could drag himself up from that kind of pit, he couldn’t stand by and do nothing as Sollux attempted the same spiraling maneuver.

He just needed a clear opening.

35 Perigees Remaining until Ascension Day.

His opening presented itself in exactly the way Karkat had both feared and expected—Sollux having a minor mental breakdown. Or as minor as it could be when Sollux was involved.

Karkat only knew something was up on the fourth night of one of Sollux’s sleep strikes, when all of the lights blew out inside the hive in a loud burst of ozone and broken glass.

“Sollux?” Karkat called out hesitantly, kicking through where a lampstand had shattered. It was early enough in the night for a weak rusty glow to shine around the edges of the blackout curtains. The light would continue to fade until the dark season reached it’s peak and turned day into dusk until the bi-lunar light season returned to wreck it’s dangers upon the world. But for now at least Karkat didn’t have to worry about daywalkers or radiation burns if Sollux broke every tinted window upstairs. He’d still have to worry about neighbors and rouge lusii and neighbors with not-so-rouge lusii but at least those dangers were constant and expected. It’s the unexpected that kills the unprepared.

“Sollux?” He called again, grumbling to himself at the lack of response. The hive was dark but his eyes could still make out the block around him in detail. He sighed and pulled his palmhusk from his sylladex, decaptchalouging the device to see if Sollux would be more agreeable to a text-based bother.

CG: YOU’D BETTER HAVE JUST SHATTERED THE LIGHTS AND NOT FRIED EVERY ELECTRONIC IN THE HIVE. WE CAN’T AFORD TO REPLACE THIS SHIT, SOLLUX! STOP BREAKING THINGS WITH THAT FREAK THINKPAN OF YOURS!

He started up the stairs, straining his ears to hear ahead of him, creeping as silent as he could.

CG: HELLO?! DO YOU FUCKING READ ME?

He reached the short hall at the top of the stairway. The arched roof stretched overhead, one side tarped over and taped in place to keep the carpet dry, their shit hideout on full, embarrassing display. The lights here were blown as well, and Karkat could scent fried wires in the air, the metallic smolder of tech burning.

That remark about ‘suspicious silence’ he’d joked about to Kanaya came back to him. Karkat gulped thickly.

CG: HELLO, KARKAT TO ASSHOLE, ARE YOU EVEN GETTING THESE? DID YOU SHORT OUT YOUR PALMHUSK TOO?

He was careful to avoid the glass at his feet, aware the crunch would give him away if the creaky floor didn’t. He stopped outside the blank door to Sollux’s makeshift respitblock. The goldblood hadn’t even had the decency to hang a sign outside marking it as his, and Karkat could smell the heavy, slightly rotten scent of honey out of overtaxed silicomb from here, just burnt enough to turn the sweetness into something rancid.

CG: LAST CHANCE, SOLLUX. ANSWER ME OR I’LL ASSUME YOU’VE PASSED AWAY AND FORCE YOU TO DEAL WITH THE CONCEQUENSES OF LETTING ME THINK THAT IF YOU ARE, IN FACT, STILL ALIVE.
CG: AND YOU’D BETTER FUCKING BE ALIVE. IF YOU’RE NOT, I WILL INVENT NEW KINDS OF MAD SCIENCE IN ORDER TO REAMINATE YOUR CORPSE, BEAT YOU TO DEATH MYSELF, AND THEN THROW YOUR SORRY REMAINS TO THE DAYWALKERS SO THAT YOU’LL RISE A SECOND TIME AND GRANT ME THE GLORIOUS OPPORTUNITY TO MURDER YOU TWICE OVER.
CG: I THINK YOU MIGHT ACTUALLY APPRECIAT THAT, WITH YOUR TWO-TWO OBSESSION BULLSHIT. I MAY BE FORCED TO INVENT A DIFFERENT WAY TO BRING YOU BACK TO KILL YOU A THIRD TIME JUST TO SPOIL THE PATTERN FOR YOU, YOU CRAZY NUMBERFUCKING NUMBSKULL.
CG: … DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU.

He opened the door, half-expecting to find Sollux seated at his husktop and growling at him, haughty as ever, half-expecting him already gone.

Sollux squinted up at him from his place on the floor. He was curled small, hands around his ears like he was blocking out a scream only he could hear. There was puke seeping into the carpet next to him, fresh and foul. His eyes glittered in the dark, red-blue with threat as he lifted his lip in a silent snarl.

Karkat’s bloodpusher gave an aching pang. He considered the sight of the troll before him, at the one all of their lives depended on, crippled by burnout, self-hatred, and an apparently pan-splitting migraine. There was too much at stake to be gentle. He wasn’t missing out on his chance to help. “Can you even see straight right now?”

Sollux hissed at him, the sound murderous enough to raise the hairs on the back of Karkat’s neck. “Get out.” His voice was thick, half-choked.

The air smelled like ozone as Karkat stepped closer, ozone and vomit and charcoal from yet another damned hole the psionic had blasted through the ceiling. Karkat hesitantly stepped closer, aware that while the troll wasn’t coordinated enough right now to even lift a strife specibus, he was still the single deadliest troll on the planet, and he didn’t need to see straight to strip the flesh off Karkat’s bones.

The sparks popped like a warning, threat fizzling into existence. “Get. Out.” There was no reason why a non-quadrantmate would approach a vulnerable troll like this aside from murder. Sollux had every right to order him gone. He stepped stubbornly closer.

Karkat felt psionics ghost across him, intangible for now, electrifying where they brushed against him. Spades would have made him say, make me, but instead Karkat swallowed obstinately, lowering his chin. “No.” He lifted his foot to step closer.

Sollux was on him in a flash. The attack was immediate, absolute, and devastating. The harmless little sparks that were all Karkat had witnessed so far solidified, striking him backwards in a burning rush that felt a little like dying. It was overwhelming. Fighting back was impossible, but beyond the flash of heat from the mental attack, there was no pain. Sollux didn’t atomize him where he stood or disarticulate his skeleton, simply shoved him towards the open doorframe without so much as lifting his head.

Karkat stumbled when the mental grip released him and pulled a pair of sickles on sheer reflex and the psionic laughed at him for it, clicking deep in his throat even as he clutched at his head from the blowback of using psionics during a migraine. “Those won’t work against me. You’d never get close enough to use them.” He turned away again, curling smaller. “Go. Next time I won’t be so gentle.”

Karkat gritted his teeth and captchalouged his sickles again. The sheer lack of grievous personal injury made him think Sollux was maybe giving him a chance. At least, he hadn’t hurt him yet for trying. Karkat’s voice was accusing. “You are one fucked up troll.”

He’d hoped the insult would inspire a scathing response, but Sollux didn’t react.

“Seriously,” Karkat dug harder. “I don’t know why I expected you to help take care of our fledgling rebellion when you can’t even take care of yourself.” It was too black of a come-on if this had been any other troll, but Sollux owned harsher truths than most.

“It’s a good thing I’m not your problem, then,” Sollux snarked back, fire in his eyes.

It was a very careful dance as Sollux invited the only opening Karkat was ever going to get. One wrong move and he’d spoil everything. Karkat crouched across from him, picking slivers of wood out the floor with his claws as he stewed over what to say. Even after perigees of thought, he still wasn’t sure how best to word it. “No, and that’s the problem, isn’t it? You’re not my problem—you’re everyone’s problem. At this point you’re your own problem and you’ve grown too big to save you from yourself. You don’t even try.”

Sollux raised his head, slowly, so slowly as Karkat flung his flaws in his face. “Why do you care?” The question was all threat, bait, but Karkat stubbornly answered anyway, because if they were to be diamonds, theirs would not be some meet-cute coupling where they feelings-jam about their petty little issues like all of the romance novels loved to show, papping each other at the first sign of strong emotion. It’s not instantaneous serendipity. It’s not pale like something soft and yielding, a pile built for two. It’s harsh and vivid and wild and it kind of feels like carving out his organs with a dull spoon.

“There’s something I don’t get,” Karkat said, falling out of his low crouch to sit, considering the troll before him as his words led in an unexpected direction. “Why’d you kill your lusus?”

Sollux’s eyes flashed, the color brightening before fading again. He snarled and turned away.

“Why?” Karkat pried, throwing the troll’s own words back at him. “If you wanted to die, there were easier ways.” He could make this easier, talk soft and sweet and never ask the hard questions, but he’d learned the hard way about one-sided pale ships and he’d never again allow himself to alter who he is for another troll’s benefit, bloodcolor be damned. If Sollux wanted him, he’d get him, abrasive assholeness and rage and all.

“Biclops,” Sollux began then bit off the words. His thin fingers clawed at the ground, but he answered. He fucking answered. “Biclops was a problem. Killing them was my solution. End of the story.”

“Why?” Karkat pressed, unrelenting. He wanted to see all of Sollux’s broken pieces, fully know them as they were, and then piece the goldblood back together again. He wanted to soothe away the shake in Sollux’s claws were he tore at his choppy hair and make him strong enough to never be miserable again. He wanted to see how great this troll could be when in control of himself, and he wanted to face down the entire world at his side, together, twice as strong as he’d ever be alone.

“What do you want from me?” Sollux sighed at last, exhausted. “I couldn’t stay at my old hivestem—Vriska knew the address. She would have used me again.” The psionic shuddered, whole-body cringing, and Karkat could imagine what daymares crawl inside his pan strong enough that even sopor couldn’t sedate them away. “I had to get away, and, and Biclops was stuck on the roof. I couldn’t take them with me, I couldn’t care for them, I didn’t need them anymore and I had to go… killing them was mercy.” Sollux’s eyes flashed back to his own with challenge. “If I’d simply left them, Biclops would have suffered before either starving or getting killed by other hivestsem residents. I did the right thing.” Sollux smirked, the expression cold and cutting. He lifted his chin from off the floor, rising just enough to stare him down, braced on one skinny arm, noble as shit for all that he was in a pool of his own bile upchuck. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not the only one of us who got rid of their lusus.”

Karkat almost wanted to cry but choked the emotion back as Sollux wormed his own verbal knife beneath his skin, push-pull, the first sign of him breaking, that he was open to pale questions as long as he won his own pain back. It was a start, Sollux showing a vulnerability and asking for one in return.

“What about you?” Sollux asked, rising further. His wiped his lips on his sleeve, pulling himself upright even as he spit in the corner to get the taste out his mouth. “I haven’t heard you mention your lusus once since you came back.”

“I didn’t kill my lusus,” Karkat stated, a warble in his voice. “And I don’t blame you for killing yours.” Was his sin any worse than Terezi’s? She’d smashed the egg once she woke up blind, cut herself off from the only way into her head Vriska could get ahold of. Eridan killed a dozen lusii a perigee. Even Vriska killed Spidermom the second the beast got too difficult to handle. Shit happened, even if it happened predominantly to the pair of them.

“What,” Sollux took a shaking breath, visibly steadying himself enough to ask without stuttering. Karkat’s heart squeezed hard at the sight, his face heating up. “What happened to Crabdad?”

Karkat had to steel himself before answering, unbending his battered pride enough to speak the truth, to share a massive fuck-up he’d never get to make right. “Do you really think I could have survived a fight against Gamzee on my own?” He asked rhetorically. His gaze was steady even if his pulse was pounding. “Crabdad bought me time to escape.”

Sollux went very still. His eyes shuttered closed for a second, the lids fluttering. Karkat tracked the motion with hyper-focus, and when Sollux spoke, his voice was small. “He was there?”

“He’s the reason I’m alive,” Karkat told him, fondly remembering the giant crab monster even as it made shame burn through him, hot and bitter. If only he’d been faster, smarter, better, maybe he could have saved Crabdad. He was cutting himself open, freely offering a truth he’d told no one else. The sharing was so close, so intimate, that it was almost like piling even if there was an empty room between them, a feelings-jam at a distance. “Gamzee killed him.”

Sollux hissed in his breath, visibly wounded. “You’ve got shit taste in moirails.”

“I do,” Karkat admitted it without hesitation. “Now get up. Take a shower. Eat some grubloaf and drink something that isn’t battery acid for once in your life or so help me I will…” He wrenched his hands through the air in a wringing motion, mining strangling the other troll because even now he was pissed off and didn’t know how to properly sort through the mess his emotions were and anger was always the safest thing to feel.

Sollux laughed at him, nasal and nasty. He stepped forward slowly, his balance gone as he let Karkat bully him into the albulitionblock. Karkat left him to scrub the slime out his hair while he reheated some three-night old grubloaf and left it for him on the table, grumbling to himself all the while because it would have been easy to make this feeling into something black, to kick the goldblood bucking and screaming down the right path of rivalry and know his anger was useful for once instead of contrary, but no, Sollux had to go and be such a fucking disaster of a troll and Karkat had to be stupid enough to fall for it.

Karkat filled a glass with water and set it next to the plate. He surveyed his piss-poor work with a scowl. The rebellion needed Sollux to pull himself together and Sollux didn’t need violence to add onto the trauma he’d already undergone. The psionic was already shifty and paranoid enough about being manipulated. Pitch wasn’t the answer here.

Sollux wandered into the room, smelling clean for once even if his hair was still a mess. Something deep in Karkat’s throat clicked at the sight, dangerously pale, and the psionic’s eyes snapped perilously towards him.

Karkat motioned to the food he’d prepared. “I can’t promise I’ll be anything but shit at this,” he warned. “My abysmal track record boasts the biggest pale failure of all time. I can’t promise I can be anything other than what I am.” He clenched his hands into fists, claws threatening to draw his freak blood, more proof of how much of a fucked up troll he was. “But I can help, if you’ll let me.”

Sollux just looked at him, faint sparks outlining the spikes of his twin horns. He didn’t respond to Karkat’s offer aside from slipping his gangly form into the rationblock to fall heavily into the lonely chair at the table. He kept his head down. “Why?”

“I can’t watch you self-destruct,” Karkat answered honesty. “That’s not who I am.” A beat passed. “And I do actually care for you, you dense fucking idiot.”

Sollux was silent for a long moment, then he said, “I’m not an easy troll to care for.” The admittance came from some deep painful place inside him, Karkat could hear the pain in his tone, and he wanted to rip it out, to heal it, to soothe it away.

“Neither am I,” Karkat stated. “If I wanted an easy diamond I’d go message Kanaya.”

That earned a laugh out of him, reedy and weak as it was. “This won’t just be a pale fling, will it?” He asked. “You’re not doing this just because you need me alive to get the rebellion off the ground?”

It was a shrewd assumption, astute and self-depreciating, remarkably on brand for both of them, fucking messes that they were. “Have I ever done anything halfway?” Karkat asked him, somewhat offended. “Sollux… this isn’t about the rebellion. It’s about you…. that is, if you feel the same.” Sudden doubt crippled him, insecurity and selfish greed, because when had anyone else truly thought he wasn’t worthless?

Sollux’s eyes snapped to him, flaring. “Do you remember the night you told me the truth about your bloodcolor?” He asked. “I hadn’t slept in nights. I’d all but given up in the worst way a troll can and I was half-resolved to go pick a fight with the nearest drone just because I wanted to die but was too cowardly to do it myself.” He broke off, swallowing, his jaw working. “And then, I got a message from you. Out of nowhere, after over a sweep of silence. I thought you were dead, then I thought you simply wanted something from me but even then I couldn’t make myself get angry over it. I was simply too grateful to hear from you.”

Sollux skittered his claws along the tabletop, carving out lines. “Then you shoved treason in my face and pounded it home with a shade of red that should have been impossible, and fuck you, because that’s when it all made sense. That’s when I understood everything. That’s the reason why you could never be around, why you stayed out of Team Charge’s games, why after she died and everything fell apart you disappeared.” He chuckled to himself, an agonized noise that had Karkat’s breath catch. “And then you had the nerve to tell me you had this great grand non-existent plan to save us all, a plan that included Aradia and even your fucking ex, because you’ve always had this bleeding heart that I knew was going to get you fucking killed one day.”

Sollux looked at him, torn between a sneer and a sob. His thin shoulders shook. “You think I’m fucked up? Take a gogdamned look at yourself. You can’t keep your feelings straight about anything, you poor doomed sucker, ranting in rebellion against an Empire that is going to crush us all eventually. We can’t win, even thinking differently is stupid. You’re stupid. You’re every bit the suicidal fool I am, but there’s this fucking goodness in you. I can’t stand to watch that die even if I have to be the one to knock some caution into you before you start making friends with every blueblood between here and the sea, because you’d pacify the entire world if you could. Your pity isn’t anything special.”

The words were cutting, cruel, but no one ever said moiraillegiance was a quadrant built on kindness and that’s maybe where he and Gamzee went so wrong, but Sollux wasn’t insulting him out of aggression for all that the words promise blood. It’s an admittance, a chance to show he’s seen all the places where Karkat’s edges don’t line up, that he thinks he can center and steady the broken bits. It’s a little selfish, self-centered, egotistic, and far too fucking assumptive, but that’s moiraillegiance. It’s not about finding a counterpoint—it’s about finding a troll he can trust to see his flaws and use them to strengthen him instead of shattering him.

And that’s got to be enough.

Somewhere, Karkat was sure Nepeta was wildly ringing the pale bells and had to force the thought out of his head because tonight, a quadrant got filled, and as Sollux dipped his head, leaning over the plate Karkat had prepared him in surrendered acceptance, things seemed a little more possible than before.

34 Perigees Remaining until Ascension Day.

They started slow. Karkat issued a mandatory two night break, zero rebellion talk allowed as he began the long, arduous task of working through Sollux’s uncountable issues. And they really were uncountable, but so were his own, so at least they were evenly-matched in terms of sheer awfulness. If being a shitty troll was a contest, they’d both medal. But where such an accomplishment would have made Karkat self-immolate out of shame, Sollux would brag, the prideful fucker. It really would have made his life easier to hate the bastard, but no.

Karkat loved making his life unnecessarily difficult. At times he was his own spade, not that he’d ever tell Sollux that fun little tidbit. There was only so much mental illness the two of them could share before they made the planet collapse in on itself under the weight of their combined assholery.

It had been a while since Karkat had anything resembling a pale quadrant and he was starting to think he’d never been true diamonds with Gamzee. This left him on a slippery slope of what the fuck to do about anything.

Start slow, Nepeta told him, so he did.

Sollux was a bit of a hoarder. Karkat was the opposite. He at least understood the goldblood’s semi-neurotic urge to hold onto every scrap wire and busted monitor he could get his claws on. Sollux’s sylladex was probably crammed to the rim with spare robotics parts and soldering kits and a backup copy of ~death since the first one he owned wasn’t treason enough.

The trash was where Karkat drew the line.

Whatever fool said moiraillegiance was something beautiful had never shoveled stinking garbage out of a decrepit respitblock before, or tried to clean a ream of crusty slime out of recuperacoon filters before condemning the whole unit to the growing pile of shit out front that Karkat planned to burn.

“What the shit?” Karkat said, helplessly holding up a black-out tarp to a hole in the wall that was too large for it to cover. The charred edges crumbled away as he clawed at them until he’d reached undamaged wood to try and nail the tarp in place.

Sollux had the decency to look chagrined even as he gave a nonchalant shrug and a non-answer via wordless grunt. He was mostly focused on maneuvering the ruined but still full recuperacoon down the stairs, a monstrously impossible task for anything but a team of bronzebloods more muscled than hoofbeasts. The device must have weighed over a thousand pounds with all of that sopor still inside but the skinny goldblood made the task look easy as he floated the thing out to the front lawnring in a quick burst of red and blue.

Karkat rolled his eyes and drove another nail home. The abandoned hive was a shithole but it was a shithole he was stuck with until Ascension Day, and he’d be damned if he let daywalkers get him before the drones. Fighting lone ones to reach Kanaya’s hive had been bad enough. Sollux lived in the floodbasins—come the next bilunar light season this place would be crawling with hordes of them.

“Why’d you even pick this place?” Karkat snapped at the goldblood as Sollux slouched his way back into his respitblock. “It was a dump long before you got your filthy claws on it.” Karkat didn’t want to wonder what had happened to the hive’s previous occupant. The troll-sized stain he’d had to cut out of the carpet in the relaxiblock made the answer clear enough, the gnawed-on bones splintered from whatever beast had done the deed.

Sollux shrugged again. “It’s quiet. There’s no one around for miles. Here we’re safe from prying eyes.”

“Most of Alternia is abandoned if you know where to look,” Karkat argued back. “We’re not exactly lacking in privacy out in the wastelands.”

“There’s a difference between abandoned and plain inhospitable to life in general,” Sollux shot back. “Fuck the wastelands. This place had both things I need if we’re going to defy the Empire for any length of time.”

“Which are?” Karkat pressed curiously, but Sollux mimed zipping his lips.

“Your orders,” he reminded Karkat, so smug it was unlawful. “No rebellion talk.”

“Fuck you,” Karkat threw a gutted palmhusk at him, oozing honey and other unspeakable fluids from a ruined chunk of silicomb. “What are we even going to do with all these fucking bees?”

Sollux shrugged again, but in a more considering manner than outright slothful. “I won’t let another brood hatch,” he said slowly. “These will reach the end of their lifespan by the end of the sweep. Coding bees won’t survive off-planet anyway.”

Shocked, Karkat stared at the towers of silicomb around them, the thinkpan that ran and stored all of Sollux’s server info and files organized into neat hexagons and transmitted by the buzzing dance of the workers. “How will you code anything without bees or grubbots?”

Sollux waved his concerns away. “I only use the bees since they’re untraceable and virtually indestructible to cyber attack. They’re how I hide from the Empire and keep my servers undetected.” He reached out slim fingers to a tower of the swarm and they crawled across his hand, the vicious brutes made harmless at his familiar touch. “They’ve done a good job keeping my sorry hide safe. I’ll miss them.” The troll’s voice was calm and even. Karkat wasn’t sure how much of it was a lie.

33 Perigees Remaining until Ascension Day.

 

Sollux showed him what lay beneath the hive, the reason why he chose a rank dripsmear of a hive to serve as his base.

The rocky ground under the hive had been blasted back, chunks ripped up by some great force to scatter the crawlcreep in debris. The underground room was unfinished, a squat hole below the floor of a closet, a bolt hole for when shit hit the fan. A crack ran through the dirt, sucking wind in a faint hiss. The passageway was narrow, a thin, crooked drag and press of stone and soil against him as Karkat followed Sollux down the maw of the ground to emerge in a hidden space below the surface.

“It’s a cave,” Karkat said, impressed as he rose to standing. Even his eyes had trouble deciphering the darkness down here. It creeped him out, how dark it actually was until Sollux lit a series of overhead panels he’d rigged together to flood the area with light.

“Lava tube, actually,” Sollux replied, smug. “I’ve tracked it. The right hand way leads to the surface eventually. The troll before must have included the shitty entrance as a last resort if they ever needed to run.” He kicked a loose stone on the ground. It skittered off for an unnervingly long way, loud and echoing. “Fat lot of good it did them in the end.”

The empty space was huge, illuminated by the lights overhead until the far sides vanished into the gloom. The walls were slightly bulbous, purpled stone around them, an untellable weight overhead. There was a dampness in the air and the floor was glassy underfoot, a sign of past lava flows. “Why do we need a lava tube?” Karkat asked, confused.

Sollux decaptchalouged a thin tool and set to messing with the wires strung between the lights. They flickered overhead. “Where else can we construct a ship large enough to carry us without being spotted by overhead drones?” He flicked a few wires, scowling. “Anything we do on the surface would be spotted by the Empire even if a fellow agemate doesn’t notice the activity.”

Karkat looked uneasily at the drag marks along the walls, deep gouges from either claws or spikes. “I am absolutely sure that there is some kind of fuck-off massive and bloodthirsty monster down here. This looks like the lair of some forgotten lusus old enough to have hatched revolutionaries from the first war.”

“Maybe once,” Sollux admitted. “But that’s long gone. I’ve seen no trace of foul beasts since I moved in and set up shop. It’s nothing but cavecrawlers the size of scuttlebuggies and centipedes long as a troll.”

The centipedes didn’t sound too terrible. Karkat was sure he could handle those but, “cavecrawlers the size of fucking scuttlebuggies? Oh sure, for you maybe that’s a non-issue, but normal trolls like me tend to get murdered by cave monsters of that size.”

Sollux shrugged off his worries. “They don’t like the light,” he explained, motioning upwards at his array of linked bulbs. “You’ll be safe as long as you don’t wander off.”

Karkat took a deep breath, held it, then let it out slow. Starting a second revolution came with hiveshit happenings. He couldn’t freak the fuck out over something as minor as cave monsters. “Okay,” he said. “We’re building our own ship underground in a cave. Makes sense. What do we do first?”

“We level the ground, widen the entrance. Set up more lights, start moving down all the tools I’ll need.” He kicked another rock to the side. “It’s going to be a shit show. I’ll need more hands than just us to get this done on time.”

Karkat considered the uneven, rocky floor. “Sollux,” he said slowly. “You’re a hacker, a coder. Do you think you can build something like this?”

Sollux snorted, derisive. “Fuck no,” he said. “I can’t even fucking weld two pipes together. I’ll make the plans and help out where I can, but I’m planning on leaving all of the real heavy building shit to Equius. This kind of thing is right up his personal ally of expertise.”

Karkat bit his lips. “Equius isn’t on our side yet,” he warned.

“And I don’t have the plans anywhere ready to start building shit yet,” Sollux reassured him. “There’s time to win him over.”

“And if we don’t win him over?” Karkat asked.

Sollux only shrugged.

30 Perigees Remaining until Ascension Day.

 

The plan unfolded in three-dimensional files amid the buzz of the silibees. The blueprints showed everything in perfect detail down to each precise measurement. Sollux started with the basic shape of the ship, then filled it in with the support systems it would need to support life. Oxygen, water, electrical, all of it. It was surprising how much room was needed to keep nine trolls alive in space, even as optimized as Sollux’s designs were.

Eridan landed the pod to the Royal Orbitor in the front lawnring after the last trip upwards to the RO, which had been stripped down to the empty shell for supplies. Sollux funneled the goods down into the hole under the closet floor he’d widened into a proper tunnel, painstakingly chiseling away at the rock face by hand, aware that anything too large or powerful could cause a cave-in.

Eridan squinted at Sollux when the seadweller met the psionic for the first time. “Damn,” was all he said.

Sollux growled at him for it, but was mostly focused on the pod itself like he was itching to take it apart and see how it worked.

“Thanks,” Karkat said, nodding at the violetblood. “This will help a lot. I know what this pod and the RO meant to you and Feferi.”

Eridan simply bent his head. “If this’ll help us escape, it’ll be worth it.” He eyed the pod for the last time, grinning faintly. “If this hunk of junk is worth more than a scupple, I’d shit myself for shock. It’s a patch-job of junk. I know this because I got it flying myself.” His voice was prideful of his work even as he condemned it as worthless.

Sollux zeroed in on the highblood as he ran one hand over where two steel panels meet, the jointing between them secure enough to have withstood a hundred trips through Alternia’s thick atmosphere. “You did this yourself?”

“Hell yes,” Eridan said, lifting his chin. “Fished her up outta the brine, scraped the suckers off her, patched the interfacing inside the shell, you name it. I built this gal outside-in.” He slapped the side of the pod roughly. One of his rings pinged off the steel with a hard clack.

Sollux’s eyes flashed. “You can build?”

“Well, yeah,” Eridan said, his gills flushed purple with embarrassment. “Ship-making was an interest of mine as a wriggler. Both sea-faring vessels and star-faring ones.” He eyed the goldblood with a faint look of challenge. “FLARP wasn’t all I did, you know. I’m worth more to the rebellion than just the guy bankrolling all the shit we need. I can be useful too.”

Sollux considered him silently, sparks popping off his horns as Karkat remembered that before things got bad, Eridan had worked closely with Vriska during FLARP sessions, the two of them terrorizing the whole of the Inner Sea with their antics. He remembered a much younger Eridan with spades in his gaze for the ceruleanblood.

It was clear Sollux remembered too, and there was bitter resentment in the words he flung at the highblood. “You knew she’d go too far.”

Eridan bristled, then shrunk in on himself. “I did,” he admitted, plain and honest. “But not against a teammate. Not even I thought she’d cross that line and I knew better than most how deep her cruelty ran. It was one of the reasons why I had the fucking crush in the first place, that vileness I saw in her. It took my breath away.” He shook his head, scowling. His boots scuffed the dirt. “I was a stupid wriggler.”

Sollux lifted his lip in a silent snarl, hands in fists. “You could have warned me. After Tavros, you could have warned me she’d retaliate.”

Eridan shook his head again, the movement harsher. “I didn’t know she’d do it,” he stressed. “Remember, Terezi was just as aware as me of Vriska’s slippery morals. I don’t think either of us could have stopped her if we’d guessed it by then. We were both blinded by her, by how great Vriska was.” His grin was a bitter thing. “It took some time but Feferi showed me the right way, and one of the things she said sticks with me.” He leveled a frank, open look at the goldblood. “Vriska is a great troll. She’s everything we’ve been taught to be… but great trolls make shitty friends.”

Sollux glared hotly at him, but the sparks jumping around his head flaked off, extinguished.

Eridan patted the side of the RO pod again. “I’ll be glad to offer my help with the building process when the time comes,” he said. “That, and as a seadweller I can get ahold of a lot of the finer, more expensive, or rarer items we might need. Between me and Fef, we can purchase the bulk of what we need to get off the ground.” He glares at Karkat, stern. “Don’t go stickin’ your necks out over illegal shit either. Let me and Fef handle it. The Empire will willingly look the other way over some minor illegal activity if it’s us doing the law-breakin’. We’ll just say it’s for some Doomsday device or the other.” He shrugged, nonchalant, a sly grin on his face. “I get that Fef wants to abolish the hemocaste system, but I don’t see why that means we can’t take advantage of it while we can.”

Sollux shook his hands out of the fists they’d formed, cooling off. Anger leaked from his every line, but it’s the old, deep-seated kind Karkat though might be permanent. The goldblood’s voice was clipped and gruff. “Thanks.”

Eridan dipped his chin in reply. “Don’t mention it. Just… treat her whale for me, ya hear?” He laid one last hand on the side of the pod, then stepped back.

Sollux nodded. “I will. This pod’d be invaluable. I’ll use every inch of it.”

“Good,” Eridan said, then he studied the far horizon. “I’ve got a long walk back to the closest road to bully a ride off the first unlucky troll to happen by. Wish me luck.”

“Don’t get eaten by a cholerbear,” Sollux smirked.

Karkat sighed at them both. “We’ll stay in touch,” he said. “I’ll have a list of supplies made for you.”

Eridan decaptchalpuged that massive laser rifle Karkat hated out of his sylladex and set it over one shoulder with ease. “Don’t worry,” he grinned, fish-bone fangs bared. “I’ll eat any cholerbear I run across.”

Karkat and Sollux stood side by side as they watched him disappear into the thick, twisted trees that grew around the hive. Sollux turned to the pod and rubbed his hands together, eyes shining. “Let’s get this rustbowl chopped up. I want its guts in my hands by dawn.”

Dawn was a bit of an ambitious goal. Karkat sighed again. “Let’s start by stripping it, okay?”

They removed everything that wasn’t a moving part, wire, or piece of tech. Every inch of the inside of the pod was crammed with the last spoils stripped from the RO itself, and Sollux captchalouged a huge amount of the stuff, taking entire piles into his sylladex with shocking ease. The mental feat of captchalouging the door alone would have knocked Karkat out even if he could carry something that heavy. Sollux made it look easy, gracefully floating the rest of it down into the lava tube psionically.

The task of stripping the inside of the pod should have taken a small army of trolls several days. Sollux accomplished the task in mere hours, and without even being winded immediately began to study the make of the pod itself. He took careful note of how everything worked together, how the outside panels fit inside each groove, measured the thickness of the carbonite glass that formed the portwindows, noted how the bolts outside were coated to prevent atmospheric scalding and radiation damage. Once he’d gone over every inch of the pod and recorded everything, he broke the pod apart with ruthless efficiency.

They met Sollux’s ridiculous self-imposed goal with minutes to spare.

27 Perigees Remaining until Ascension Day

 

Sollux broke ground after much reluctant prodding on Karkat’s part. The goldblood had begun to spiral again, overwhelmed by the sheer monstrosity of the task and obsessing over every smallest detail.

Keeping Sollux sane and functional shouldn’t have been a full-time job, but it was, and Karkat couldn’t help but resent the troll a little for it and not even in a black way, just a bitter one. If there was one thing Karkat had learned about the psionic, it was that Sollux was twice as ornery as he’d feared. Even as moirails, Sollux seemed incapable of trusting Karkat, showing anything resembling vulnerability, or admitting when he was feeling less than perfect. As frustrating as Sollux could be, sometimes intentionally so, Karkat thought he would have been able to handle it if it hadn’t been for one indomitable fact.

Sollux reacted badly to physical touch. Even getting close to him was rare, and the few times Karkat had dared to reach out to him had been met with rejection and outright violence. Karkat hadn’t been wounded yet, but only because so far Sollux had withheld from confiscating his limbs in a permanent way.

So Karkat found himself forced to intervene at a distance, relying on verbal assault and Trollian because for all that they were diamonds, it was a tedious quadrant that they both objectively sucked at and Sollux may very well remove Karkat’s hands if he tried anything resembling a pale pap.

It was another wall between them, and part of Karkat wondered if it was himself that was the problem.

He struggled with the mirror he was moving, miraculously unbroken, fished out of the back room he’d been storing hivejunk in until Sollux needed it to support more frames of silicomb to better visualize and compute the systems just starting to take shape underground. The entire hive was in the slow process of becoming one massive computing unit. Karkat had no idea how Sollux was powering all of this; they were off the grid out here.

The ornate frame of the mirror was chipped but the glass was intact, dusty beneath a layer of grim. Some troll had carved the runes for ‘elijer’ on the back in wide script, the hatchsign unintelligible. He shouldn’t care, but Karkat couldn’t help but wonder about the troll who once lived here, what age they made it to, what they liked, their hobbies, what possessed them to live way out here alone and die violently by the tableplane so that Karkat had to sweep up their bones and dump them outside.

He shouldn’t care, but he did. This tiny abandoned hive might have so easily been his own. He lived alone and forgotten until recently, so distant no one would have come searching for his body once his violent end found him and ended his stubborn existence.

He stared at his dull reflection in the grimy glass, at the eyes just beginning to show the stain of his blood, another mark against his freak body for the fucked up way he was put together, bleeding shades that shouldn’t exist and feeling emotions that made no fucking sense.

He didn’t blame Sollux for his clear aversion to suffering Karkat’s touch. He studied himself closely, wiping away a streak of dust with his palm to get a better view. He hated his hands, hated his entire mismatched form, too small, too nubby, too short, with his stupid blunt teeth and useless horns and eyes that shone the wrong color. He looked away, teeth bared at himself as he lugged the mirror back up onto his back, half-resolved to shatter it once he got the thing outside.

Sollux met him at the door, already seething. “We have a problem.”

Karkat grunted under the weight of the mirror and shoved past him, highly aware of how Sollux twisted to make sure no part of them brushed against the other as he stomped out the door and into the dead hivering. “What else is new?”

Sollux frowned, rattled and frazzled in equal measure. “Come look for yourself.”

Karkat hefted the mirror into the junk pile. It bounced and landed flat, face-down in the dirt. He bit back a sigh of disappointment. “Fine.”

The tunnel down to the cave was as well-lit as a midnight evening, the cavernous space crammed floor to ceiling with screens and monitors, keypads and typingboards, grids of wires and tech Karkat had no name for, and nothing that resembled even the frame of a spacecraft.

Sollux crossed immediately to one of the screens and began typing away, scowling. “Here,” he said, pulling up a diagram. “Problem.”

Karkat squinted at the screen. It was a bit confusing to see things properly; Sollux had overlaid several diagrams at once, each in a different color so that it was a confusing mess. “What exactly am I supposed to be looking at?”

Sollux growled and hit a series of buttons and the screen shifted into a different view. “Look,” he stressed. “Major fucking issue, okay? How the fuck are we supposed to get ahold of sopor once we get up there? Recooperacoon filters will only hold a batch for a few perigees and that’s only if we’re okay with disgusting personal hygiene, and after that deadline passes and the sopor spoils we’ll be shit out of luck.”

Karkat blinked as he realized the diagram was an expanded view of the complex filtering system of a basic recooperacoon. “Could you make it last longer?”

Sollux growled again, a near-hiss. “I already did. These new filters I’ve designed will hold a batch fresh for three times as long, but it’s not going to be enough. It’s not exactly a long-term solution, Karkat. If I try to stretch out a single batch any further than I have already the fumes will get us all as it begins to break down, and spoiled sopor is fucking volatile. It’ll burn through the filters even faster once it sours.”

Karkat leaned closer, keenly aware of how Sollux moved back to give him more space as he studied the screen. “We can’t make our own?”

“No,” Sollux stated, voice flat. “The mechanics involved would be too much for our systems to handle, even if we could reverse-engineer the stuff.”

Karkat ran through a few different scenarios, all of them bad. “Is this the only major problem so far?”

“No,” Sollux grunted. “But I can think my way out the rest probably. This is the one I can’t see a clean way out of.” He started typing more, running projections.

“We can stay awake for ten nights in a row if we have to,” Karkat pointed out, already aware it wasn’t a solution.

“And then we can kill each other if exhaustion doesn’t get us first,” the psionic snapped, sparks flaring. “If a bad dayterror gets me, I’ll rip the ship apart myself, and that’s if Nepeta doesn’t chew out my digestionsack first when she’s stuck in a dayterror of her own.” He stopped typing, voice tight. “The Empire won’t have to kill us if we can’t get proper, sedated rest. We’ll take care of ourselves for them.”

Karkat frowned at the screen. “There’s an obvious solution here.”

Sollux raid one eyebrow. “Really?”

Karkat nodded. “If we can’t make it when we run out, we go all pirate-happy and steal it. The Fleet has tons of sopor lying around—they have entire ships meant to transport it!”

Sollux blinked slowly at him, fingers twitching. “Steal from the Fleet?”

“Yeah,” Karkat said. “It’s not a big deal. Weren’t we planning on wrecking their shit anyway? Why not add grabbing some fresh sopor to the list of ways we’re going to torment them?”

Sollux rubbed at his eyes. “You’re fucking crazy, Karkat. You know that, right?”

“Hell yes,” Karkat answered pridefully.

“Steal from the Fleet?” Sollux mused, staring at his screens. “Steal from them? When I’m only 11% sure we can hide from them and that’s when they aren’t actively looking for us, which they certainly will if we hit a transit ship.”

“Don’t act like you wouldn’t fucking love to plan that raid yourself,” Karkat shot at him, half joking. “I now that big thinkpan of yours is itching to get the better of the Empire.”

Sollux considered him. “You really are thinking about outright rebellion, aren’t you?” He asked, quieter, his voice almost a whisper in the lava tubes. “It’s not just about survival for you, is it?”

“It never was,” Karkat told him, chin raised stubbornly. “What’s the point of escaping if we don’t do anything with the freedom?”

Sollux shrugged. “We stay breathing,” he pointed out.

“But we leave every other troll alive to suffer and die at the claws of the HIC and her broken, backwards Empire,” Karkat argued. “That’s not winning, that’s not freedom—its cowardice. It’s the betrayal of the very freedom we claim to have.”

Sollux studied him closely. “Most trolls would say fuck everyone else.”

“Well, fuck that,” Karkat snorted, hands in fists. “I’m a fucking mutantblooded hatched traitor. The entire universe decided I wasn’t fucking worth it, so I’ll be the one to stand up and say differently. Fuck that. Fuck them. Fuck the Empire and the HIC. I won’t let them decide to operate a system that declared me cullbait on the whim of some seadweller with blood every bit as rare as mine.”

Sollux was still looking at him closely, something unreadable in his expression. “Rarer,” he said softly. “There’s two fuchsiabloods with Feferi alive.”

“And?” Karkat asked, irritated. “That’s just more proof that the hemocaste system is fucked.”

Sollux grinned, fangs sloppy against his tongue as he lisped, “You’re very small to fit so much anger inside you.”

“Yeah, well I had to cut out a good deal of common sense to get it to fit,” Karkat joked, and Sollux laughed again, easy and open and true, laughing together, and it almost was a moment, almost, until Karkat had to ruin it. “Why are you so afraid of me?”

Sollux’s teeth snapped together as his jaw closed. “I’m… not?” He framed it as a question, confused. “You’re not exactly an intimidating foe to a troll with eyeball lasers.” He flared his eyes at the words, proving his point with a snap of psionics.

Karkat didn’t let himself get sidetracked by the joke. “I didn’t mean as a physical threat,” he explained, scoffing. “I know I’m no shining example of fighting prowess.”

“Then what did you mean?” Sollux asked, for once focused mainly on him instead of being split between different things.

“You kinda proved my point just then,” Karkat admitted, dejected. “Your first thought of me was ‘foe’, even though we share a quadrant. You’re not comfortable around me. You don’t trust me.”

“Karkat,” Sollux sighed, and to his surprise Sollux sounded pissed. It still shocked him, how fast the psionic could get angry, his wildfire mood erratic and unpredictable. “I just listened to you rant when several different variations of the words ‘fuck the Empire’ came spewing put your mouth. I’m designing a fucking spacecraft for you! Of course I trust you, dumbass.”

“You’re not comfortable around me,” Karkat repeated, reacting to Sollux’s anger with his own even as he tried to stomp it down. “Don’t lie. I see how you act.”

Sollux’s eyebrows drew together in a line, then cleared with realization. He shifted, suddenly tense and wary. “You’ve noticed that?”

“Yes, moron,” Karkat shot at him, hiding his hurt. “I’m your moirail. It’s my job to notice things about you.” He didn’t turn to face the psionic. He didn’t want to see how even now Sollux stepped back.

“Yeah,” Sollux trailed off. He didn’t say more, but the admittance was enough to make Karkat’s chest feel tight in-between his ribs as the goldblood didn’t attempt to deny it. Sollux moved off, drifting away, scratching at his neck with his claws in a dry rasp. “Would it help if I said it wasn’t you?”

Karkat blinked, zeroing in on him. “What?”

“It isn’t you,” Sollux stated, still not looking at him.

Karkat wet his lips, mouth dry. “It’s not?”

“What made you think it was?” Sollux asked, but he was still enraged even though the emotion was burning rapidly out, giving way to a deep apathy, that one emotion Karkat hated the most because when Sollux had retreated behind its walls, he was untouchable.

“Me?” Karkat squeaked out, disbelieving. “Oh, I don’t fucking know, just my everything!” He gestured at himself, from toe to blunt horntip. “I’m used to being a disgusting wreck. If I were you, I wouldn’t want to look at me either. Look, I get it, okay? I’m worthless. I’m a disgrace to trollkind. I sure as fuck wouldn’t want my tainted ass anywhere near me.”

Sollux’s apathy shattered like a pane of glass as he swung right around to sheer, burning ire without warning. His bi-colored eyes flashed dangerously.

It struck him like a fist, a psionic wave that threw him up against the rough wall of the lava tube, coarse grit at his back, rock crumbling under his claws as Sollux held him pinned there with his feet off the ground, power flaring around him, the energy snapping off his twin horns in thin bolts of lightning. The light that bled from his eyes was nearly too bright to look at, his lips in a wordless snarl.

The husktop grid around him went wild, screens shorting out. The lights overhead flickered from the force of Sollux’s anger, tangible enough to crawl against his skin as he strained against the mental hold, but Sollux’s grip was unshakable.

“Sollux?” Karkat asked, fear tingling its way down his spine as he clenched his useless hands into fists as Sollux stalked towards him.

Karkat had thought he’d been dead when Eridan had charged him, snarling. But the gun-toting highblood was nothing compared to an enraged Sollux. And he didn’t even know what line he’d mistakenly crossed to trigger this. Dust rained down from the roof of the cave as the air itself shook with the weight of the pissed-off psionic’s fury.

Sollux stalked closer, hissing like he wouldn’t even bother using psionics to kill him, like he’d chosen to use teeth instead and tear his throat out. They were at eye level, Sollux pinning him up against the wall so that for once they were at a matched height. Karkat tried to pull a sickle out of his strife deck but his trapped fingers couldn’t even move to grab it when he decaptchalouged the curved blade. It clattered to the rocky ground and Sollux kicked it away, snarling as he put his face right up against Karkat’s own, nearly spitting with rage.

“Don’t you ever,” Sollux choked out, his shoulders shaking. “Call yourself worthless.”

Karkat’s mind nearly short-circuited. “What?”

Sollux dropped him without warning, backing away. The drop was short but unexpected and Karkat stumbled, landing unsteady on the uneven ground. He didn’t go for the abandoned sickle, instead opening his empty hands trying to deescalate the situation even as it occurred to him that for as brash and inescapable as Sollux’s attack had seemed, it hadn’t hurt him, not even as the lights overhead began to fizzle out and die from the degree of power the psionic was throwing around. Sollux hadn’t so much as bruised him.

Sollux wrapped his thin arms around himself, shoulders slumping, and damn it all, they must be moirails, because for all of the blatant warnings screaming danger! will burn your face off! All Karkat wanted to do was comfort the goldblood, to dig down to the source of this misery and settle it.

With a murmured whisper of ‘I must be fucking crazy’, Karkat approached the psionic.

The overhead lightgrid died off in a burst of sparks. The lavatube was plunged into darkness, true darkness, the kind not even trolls could see through that constricted itself down around them in a tight bubble, only held back by the faintest glow of orange from where the techgrid was smoldering itself to death. The dull blaze of Sollux’s eyes were the brightest things around, lit beacons the psionic couldn’t turn off.

“Don’t,” Sollux choked out. “Don’t call yourself that.”

Karkat stopped an armspan away. Sollux wrapped his twiggy arms around himself and backed further away. This time, Karkat didn’t follow. Instead, he sat right down on the rocky ground, planting himself with his back to the crawling dark that pressed against the edges of his senses. For trolls, fear of the dark was common sense, survival instincts functioning at their fullest, and Karkat squashed them down to focus on his suffering moirail.

He didn’t know how he’d fucked up, but he knew how to try and make it right. “You’ll have to talk eventually,” Karkat told him. “If you don’t say how I’ve fucked up, I’ll do it again because I don’t know how best to act or what not to say. If you want this to stop,” he motioned at the burnt-out lights overhead, where his sickle lay abandoned on the floor, “you’ll need to get that I can only help you if you let me.”

For once, Sollux didn’t argue. He curled out of sight, claws scraping against the hard packed ground. “It’s—it’s just so fucked up.” He waved at his head, wincing. “It’s all twisted.”

“So start at the beginning,” Karkat ordered. “Make it smaller. I know how huge and terrible these things make themselves into.” He folded his arms across his chest, resolved to sit here for as long as it took. “Shit, Sollux, do you think it was easy for me to start telling others that I was a mutant? It was easier to say I was planning treason against the Empire than tell them I bleed red.”

Sollux shrugged, non-committal. “You still did it.”

“So can you,” Karkat said. “Spit it out.” He stared off into the darkness, so complete and impenetrable he couldn’t even trick himself into seeing shapes within it, just emptiness. “What set you off?”

There was a shuffle, the brush of cloth over cloth as Sollux shifted positions. When he answered, it was uncertain. “You… you called yourself worthless.”

“And?” Karkat pressed. “Why did that warrant the killing of all your tech down here?” The admittance of the source of Sollux’s pain made something soft and pale squirm its way through Karkat’s chest. Was this a real feelings jam? Would he finally get a glimpse at how miswired things were inside his moirail’s panfried head?

“I didn’t mean to short-out the lights,” Sollux muttered, grumbly and waspish. “It just…” He bit off the words, chewing on them. “She used to say that, you know? Aradia used to call herself that, as a joke.” His chuckle was thin and wretched. “It was never a joke to Vriska.”

“She… She was always so much better at this stuff than me,” Sollux admitted, faint sparks zapping into the shadows around his head, showing snapshots of his expression before the light faded. “Aradia never destroyed things on accident. Her control was perfect. Flawless. Maybe too perfect.” Sollux’s voice turned dark and bitter. “Vriska knew she’d never stand a chance in a real fight with Aradia. For all that the Hemospectrum sets lowbloods at the bottom, it’s awfully funny how strong some of us are.” Sollux held up one hand and red-blue fire glazed across his skin, it’s light as flickering and patternless as the static before a lightning strike. “Aradia would have destroyed her. She’d have made it look easy.”

Karkat never got to meet the psychic before her death. All he knew of her was the rust text he’d read through their chats, her quick wit and reckless disregard for bloodcastes she should have respected but never did. “I wish I could have met her.”

Sollux was silent. “I hurt her,” he whispered. “I killed her. Vriska never would have stood a chance against a powerful psychic like my matesprit, so she evened the playing field.” Sollux stared at the power held flickering in his fingers. His hand clenched into a fist. “I… I don’t even remember,” he admitted. “I murdered my matesprit, the troll who trusted me, and I don’t even fucking remember it.”

Karkat’s throat cinched tight around the wrong words. He couldn’t imagine that type of pain. “Maybe that’s mercy.”

“I don’t deserve that sort of kindness,” Sollux said darkly. “I betrayed her.”

“No, you didn’t,” Karkat promised him, refusing that kind of self-hatred. “Vriska got her claws into your thinkpan. She’s the one that twisted your mind. It was never a betrayal.”

“I should have stopped it,” Sollux spat out, and the fire in his hand grew brighter and more volatile. “I should have been strong enough to burn her out. I should have been able to resist. I was her fucking puppet. I was nothing but a body for Vriska to steer around. I was a tool. I was used.” He shuddered, full-body, from toe to horntips. “I was violated and Aradia died because of it.” The light in his hand vanished, the snap of psionics fading away to plunge the area into shadow.

The little bit of vision Karkat had gained evaporated. The darkness was a crawling thing that scrabbled against his eyelids, smothering. He pushed it back, blinking into the blindness. “Yes,” Karkat said, because hiding from the truth never made it go away, and that’s what Sollux has been doing. Hiding out here in a decrepit hive, bottling everything up until he explodes, too afraid to even say his matesprit’s name, hating himself. “Aradia died. Vriska killed her. None of that was ever your fault.”

“But,” Sollux argued like if he found the right angle, the facts would find him guilty. Karkat wasn’t having it.

“No!” Karkat stated firmly. “None of that pessimistic ‘woe is me’ bullshit!” He snapped, baring teeth. “When you realized Vriska had the power to make you her tool, you ran. You left your hive behind, put down your lusus, and went off the grid where she couldn’t make you hurt anyone else. That’s bravery. That’s fucking heroism, you dense fucking fool!” Karkat was breathing hard, nearly panting. “I won’t let you sit here and try to talk yourself into being the bad guy. You’re not the villain here—you’re the victim.”

“But if I’d simply been better,” Sollux argued, claws squealing against the rocky ground. “If my fucking head wasn’t so much of a minefield to think through, maybe I could have fought her off. Something doesn’t run right inside my thinkpan, don’t you get it? It’s not my psionics. It’s not my genius. It’s something deeper than that, something that got fucked up and wired incorrectly at some stage of development before I was even a wriggler.”

“I know,” Karkat said, unflinching. He knew there was a crack that ran through the troll’s mind. He didn’t walk blindly into moiraillegiance with the goldblood, so he kept his voice succinct. “It’s in your moodswings. It’s in your migraines. It’s in the way you can’t think about anything so you think about everything. It’s that loud, crowded place between your auralsponges that doesn’t ever shut up.”

Sollux’s eyes, the only things visible in the gloom, snapped to him. “I also hear the dead,” Sollux deadpanned.

Karkat sputtered, his next words fading. “What?”

“Not the dead exactly,” Sollux amended. “Just those close to it.” He sighed, low and wheezy before he explained. “Aradia knew I could hear trolls about to die. She was… a little like me, I guess. Had something not quite right deep on the inside that let her see and hear the already dead.”

Karkat bit down hard on his tongue s Sollux went on. “She always had this goal, you know? To try and save someone who was doomed. She thought with my warning imminent-death-radar and her skill, we could potentially save a troll who was already doomed. I think in a way, trying to save someone else was better than trying to save ourselves, because Aradia knew that psionics like me were doomed and so were powerful psychics like her. That was our Rebellion, our tiny little revolt to spite the Empire.” He spit to the side, thick and pained. “We never saved a single one. We were always too late.”

“You tried to warn her,” Karkat guessed, the realization striking like flint to steel. “You tried to save her.”

“I heard her voice,” Sollux said, nearly a sob. “I heard her. I knew she was in danger. And I did warn her. I made her swear to stay inside her hive, to trust no one, be alert. Be ready.”

“It never even crossed my mind that I might have been the threat,” Sollux huffed, shifting in place. “Aradia lived hours away; there was no way I’d get there in time to help so… I broke my own rules. I ate the mind honey, which is why Vriska was able to waltz into my twisted fucking brain. I was her doom.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Karkat repeated, scrambling to fit this new information into place in his mind, like Sollux need some new bullshit to deal with. Hearing the voices of the soon-to-be-dead? What the fuck? And Aradia too, with something similar? Karkat couldn’t help but stare into those red/blue eyes and wonder how high the price for such power really was, if it would ever be worth it.

“In a way, it’s one big shit-smeared self-fulfilling prophecy.” Sollux went on, despondent, picking at the rocks with his claws. “I try to save her and in doing so seal her fate. She probably opened her hive door for me with a smile on her face.” The world’s grimmest laugh sounded from his thin lips. “At least I would have made it quick.”

Karkat absorbed the words as truth. He’d seen the pictures of Aradia’s hive afterwards, nothing but scorched soil and broken concrete. Obliterated devastation. Vriska always did love a spectacle.

But Karkat was putting other pieces together too. Mind honey, the substance Sollux had once cultivated to feed his lusus, to keep the beast manageable with the side effect of dulling mental prowess at the cost of a power boost. And Sollux had gotten rid of his lusus. No lusus, no mind honey. No more chances for him to slip up, one less doorway for Vriska to barge through. Haunted by voices, Sollux’s voice saying ‘it’s quiet here’ when asked why he chose a hive in the middle of grubshit nowhere, how when caught in a migraine he’d always cover his ears.

Karkat’s throat was tight with pain as a few pieces clicked into place, forming a picture of abject sufering. “Look, losing Aradia was a tragedy but you can’t give Vriska another victory.” He ordered, strangling back a pale chirp that sat at the back of his tongue. “This fear, that’s just her winning.”

“Bullshit,” Sollux snapped back, a little more fire in his voice than before. “I was nothing to Vriska. She doesn’t give a shit about me and never did. What I do doesn’t fucking matter to her.”

“Then don’t do it to spite her,” Karkat stressed. “Stop hurting for yourself. For me.” That pale sound he’d been holding back slipped out, breathless and dripping with pity. “I can’t stand seeing you like this.”

Part of Karkat was convinced he’d pushed too far, and that Sollux would draw back in disgust at the proof of his sloppy emotions. But he didn’t react to the sound at all aside from a quick burst of static around his twin horns, the sparks lighting up his expression for the barest moment, showing how uncertain and vulnerable he looked before shadow cloaked him again.

It was the worst kind of torture, to be so close and still so far. Karkat’s palms burned with longing, to reach out and touch him and wipe away this pain.

Almost like Sollux read his mind, the goldblood huffed miserably. “That’s why I don’t like being touched,” Sollux admitted, his voice small. “The last time I let someone close, I hurt them.”

With his heart pounding out his pulse like thick syrup through his veins, Karkat slowly reached out, telegraphing his every movement, going slowly enough that nothing was a surprise, palm-out as he reached through the darkness.

Sollux tolerated the breech in his personal space for a long moment, watching silently with his glowing eyes, long enough that Karkat thought he might make contact after all, then pulled away at the last second with his hands in fists. “Don’t,” Sollux said, and he sounded so tired.

Karkat dropped his arm, his eyes burning. But if he couldn’t calm with touch, he still had his words.

Karkat talked, filling the empty void around them with the sound of his voice, reciprocating his own well-formed thoughts on why he was such a bastard and overly clingy and never seemed to feel things in the right ways, his deepest shame. How he missed his lusus and blamed himself for being terrible enough at fighting to get Crabdad killed, at being such a shitty moirail he couldn’t calm Gamzee down even to save his life, how he’d been stupid enough to fall for a trap planned by a sopor-addicted clown who couldn’t add five plus five together and come up with anything close to a correct answer who didn’t know how magnets worked. How the embarrassment stung as badly as the shame. And how his self-hatred ran deep enough he avoided looking in mirrors because he never liked the troll he saw staring back at him. How he’d been so fucking jealous of Sollux when they first started talking, the troll who had it all—the power to defend himself, a beautiful devoted matesprit, the technical skill to accomplish anything, and a cool enough head to stay away from FLARP games. In a way, Sollux’s existence was the correct way to shoot the middle finger at the Empire in every way Karkat’s existence accomplished the opposite.

The longer he talked, the more he managed to draw Sollux up out of his own head, until the goldblood was spitting his own rebukes and arguments at him, twisting the logic around to try and get Karkat to say something good about himself.

But Karkat didn’t try to touch him again and Sollux never wormed a complement out of him. It still felt like ground-breaking progress, the first successful feelings-jam he’d ever had, and Karkat felt lighter than he’d ever been. The emotional blowback made everything feel tingly. His cheeks were burning.

The session was cut short by the sudden fall of rock, a scampering sound, the click-clack of mandibles and chitin armor over the grit covered floor. Karkat spun around at the sound, his sickle still laying abandoned out of reach from where Sollux had kicked it, so he drug a second pair out of his strife deck and held them at the ready, eyes vying to pierce the darkness.

Behind him, Sollux didn’t bother with trying to see through the shadows. Instead, he lit up the room, illuminating the entirety of the lava tube to beyond even where the lights would have reached.

The monster screeched, an ear-splitting burst of sound like claws down sheet metal when the light fell over it’s long, twisting body. The low slung figure of the centipede was easily as long as a city scuttlebuggy, each ugly pale leg ending in a wicked claw, it’s horrible white face topped by a pair of sideways teeth large enough to sheer a troll in two. Karkat immediately rethought his earlier boast about taking one of these monsters alone. The beast was fucking huge.

That three-second glimpse was all Karkat got of the centipede. He didn’t have the time to even start thinking of any strategy to take it down or, even better, fucking run, when Sollux ended the fight before it began, winging a single steel and copper throwing star out of his sylladex with the force of his psionics behind it. The shrunken struck the centipede in the center of its face, directly between the oversized mandibles, and with the strength of psionic energy behind it the shrunken didn’t stop there. Within a second Sollux had cleaved the beast into two halves directly down the middle. The still-twisting legs fell aside, olive blood staining the dusty floor.

Sollux held the light around him for a moment, a second star ready between his reedy fingers as he searched for a second rouge lusus creeping up on them in the dark. When no other centipede or cavecrawler appeared, he let the shine of the red and blue fire shrink back until only Karkat and him were left illuminated by the fire that sparked around him.

Karkat clutched his useless sickles. “What the fuck?”

Sollux didn’t even seem perturbed by the attack, shrugging. “It was stupid of us to sit down here in the dark for so long, making noise. No wonder something came creeping around.”

Karkat stared at him. Sollux recaptchalouged the shuriken back into his strife deck, considering the burnt-out lightgrid above him. “I’ll get these fixed quickly. There’s work to do down here.”

“You have a strife specibus?!?” Karkat croaked out, shocked.

Sollux gave him an odd look. “Yeah. So?”

Karkat gaped at him wordlessly.

Sollux laughed, delighted, the bit of chaos shaking him from the last of his fug. “It’s not all flashy lights and electrocution with me,” he joked. “I have more options than simply vaporizing shit that annoys me.”

Karkat grumbled and tucked his sickles back into his sylladex, stomping over to retrieve his first blade. “Throwing stars? That’s just showing off.”

“Maybe,” Sollux answered, elusive. “But some problems can only be solved by sharp bits of metal through vital organs.”

Karkat looked down at the massacre of bugflesh at his feet. “I won’t argue with that.” He kicked part of the centipede, splattering green everywhere. “But this? This was overkill. Now who’s going to clean up this mess?”

Sollux snorted and bent down, touching each half of the dead monster with one hand. There was the fizz and snap of ozone and Sollux neatly captchalouged both halves into his sylladex, leaving nothing behind but the stain on the floor. “I’ll dump it in the woods later,” he offered, showing no strain at having captchalouged something so massive and weighty.

Karkat grumbled at him again, feeling pissy and inadequate at the reminder that Sollux excelled in everything he attempted, from handling murder-bugs like wriggler’s play to sylladexing things that would have killed Karkat from the mental abuse of it.

It was another 180, Sollux swinging wildly from emotionally compromised to fiendishly competent. Karkat couldn’t kid himself into believing he had a part in it. “When will the lights be up?”

Sollux shrugged. “Today.”

Karkat raised eyebrows at the troll. “Today?” He asked in disbelief, motioning overhead. “You can rewire all of this today?”

“Sure,” Sollux said, easy as slime. “I’d force you to help but I’m sure I can do it faster alone.” His grin was a shit-eating thing.

Karkat growled, mock-insulted. “Asshole.”

“Shoo,” Sollux waved him away, lighting up the way to the tunnel to the surface with a string of red and blue static. “Let me get to work. I’ll have this done in no time.”

Part of Karkat wanted to argue against leaving him down here alone, but Sollux could handle any creatures that wanted to tear a chunk from his skinny hide. Trust ran both ways, so Karkat nodded and left his mad moirail down alone in the darkness to heal what he’d broken when he’d lost control, every step upwards back to the hive above feeling like another small victory.

25 Perigees Remaining until Ascension Day.

 

Two perigees later and Karkat knew it was time to up the stakes. He Pestered Kanaya first, conscripting her to help with construction where belowground, the lavetube was starting to hide something that looked more and more like a fleetcraft. Kanaya agreed even if she said the journey to the hive would take time. Having the jadeblood fully commit to Karkat’s insane dream was more victory than gaining another set of hands.

Next came Eridan, putting his talk of shipbuilding up to face the schoolfeeder. The seadweller proved competent at following orders and basic construction, but even with the three of them plus Karkat helping, Sollux soon hit a wall he couldn’t cross with mediocre hands.

“We need an expert,” Sollux deadpanned, eyes flat with exhaustion. “I’m a fucking coder, not a wielder. I need someone with the right kind of skills to build what I need to get this ship in flying order.”

Karkat knew his timeline was running thin, so he enlisted Sollux’s help on solving a different, more devious issue.

Sollux didn’t blink at the moral quandary of the issue, completing the task with ruthless efficiency, even going beyond what Karkat specified to really bring the point around.

Then once he couldn’t put it off any longer, he pestered Nepeta.

CG: IT’S TIME. ARE YOU READY?

She responded to him quickly.

AC: :33 < yes. i have everything under control.
CG: EVEN HIM?
AC::33 < trust me. i can handle him.
AC: :33 < but in the spirit of being purpared, what have you b33n planning to do about my moirail?

Karkat outlined the plan to her. She was dismayed but unsurprised.

CG: WHAT DO YOU THINK? WILL IT BE ENOUGH?
AC::33 < to k33p him from turning on you, yes. but its not going to win any favors with him. he may hate you fur it.
CG: THAT MIGHT BE A GOOD THING, HIDEOUS AS IT IS TO CONTIMPLATE. HOLD ON A SEC, LET ME GO RIP OUT MY TONGUE FOR EVEN CONSIDERING THAT A VALID OPTION. LIKE, I’M WILLING TO DO A WHOLE FUCKING LOT TO MAKE THIS PLAN WORK, BUT I’VE GOTTA DRAW THE LINE SOMEWHERE.
AC::33 < i meant platonically.
AC:: 33 < he will resent you fur trapping him like this. he still thinks that his future with the empire will be a bright one. he doesn’t s33 how easily they’ll break him, not when a part of him wants to get broken.
CG: TMI! NEPETA, THAT’S GROSS.
AC: :33 < its how he was raised! that’s what his dumb musclebeast lusus has b33n scoolf33ding him since he left the brooding caverns. they want him to be an obedient blueblood, a purfect highblood officer if he survives his first few trials without getting murdered by a teammate.
AC::33 < it’s a s33d they plant young, karkat. ripping it out won’t help—it’ll only do damage. he’s got to be the one who decides to kill the w33d.
CG: WHEN DID YOU GET SO GOGDAMNED SMART? DON’T YOU LIVE IN A HOLE IN THE GROUND AND EAT WILD MEAT IN THE TREES WITH YOUR LUSUS?
AC: :33 < pounce was smart to raise me the way she did. it taught me to look after myself, to think fr33ly without the dread influence the empire brainwashes wrigglers with. being raised feral is how i’m able to be myself, karkat, instead of the troll the empire wanted me to turn into.
AC::33 < and i was never completely isolated, dummy! i had all of you, remember. you made it easy to s33 every place the empire was wrong.
AC::33 < meow let me do my part to make it right.
CG: THREE NIGHTS, NEPETA. THE SECOND LIGHT SEASON WILL START AFTER THAT AND THEN THIS PLACE WILL BE FLOODED WITH DAYWALKERS. DO YOU NEED TO COORDINATES AGAIN?
AC: :33 < no, ive memorized them.
CG: IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU CAN THINK OF THAT I CAN HELP WITH? ANYTHING AT ALL? JUST ASK AND I’LL DO IT.
AC: :33 < it may motivate me more to hear how well my plan worked with you and sollux ;)
CG: FUCK NO. DETAILS ABOUT MY PALE QUADRANT BELONG TO ME AND HIM ALONE, YOU NOSEY MEDDLER.
AC: :33 < glad to hear everything is working purfectly then! its another successful match to mark on my shipping wall.
CG: YOU ARE SCARILY GOOD AT THIS, YOU KNOW.
AC: :33 < i try.

...

 

Karkat spent the next three nights reinforcing the hive’s defenses tenfold. With three and soon-to-be six trolls living here, it would be a hotspot for daywalkers to hit as soon as the radioactive sun grew scalding enough to rouse them. His panic only doubled when Kanaya messaged him to let him know she was behind schedule and will most likely be arriving after the turn of the season.

Then Eridan let him know Feferi was on her way too, by Sollux’s order, which sent him screeching down to the cave intent on knocking some common sense into his moirail.

Karkat raced down the tunnel, already scowling, only to be met with an awe-inspiring sight. The lavatube was brightly lit, scaffolding supporting where the outer shell of the ship was taking shape, tall enough to nearly touch the ceiling far overhead. The ship was oddly shaped, wedge-like and bulky, like the shed skin of a cicada. It was empty on the inside, no guts just yet, but the shape was taking form.

Sollux was hovering around his row of monitors, typing away as he sized and resized and adjusted some complicated-looking grid sequence to jigsaw it between other systems within the ship’s blueprint, growling with collisions occurred.

“What the fuck are you thinking?!” Karkat hissed, stomping over to him, dodging piles of tech he had no names for heaped randomly about the place.

Sollux didn’t grace him with any acknowledgement, still fiddling with his holoscreens.

“Sollux!” Karkat hissed, true and sharp.

Sollux looked up in irritation. “What?”

“Why did you tell Eridan he could invite his moirail over to stay with us?” Karkat forced out through gritted teeth.

Sollux shrugged and looked back at the screens. “I need more bodies to test if the oxygen system will run smoothly or suffocate us all. Plus, maybe the seadweller will whine less with her around.”

“Its nearly the second light-season,” Karkat accused. “Are you trying to get us killed?”

Sollux rolled his eyes. “I doubt daywalkers are much of a threat to us. We’re not exactly the most helpless bunch of trolls around.” He shot a pointed look at Karkat. “Plus the Heiress is a skilled fighter who can more than hold her own against daywalkers. She’s boon more than drag.”

“More of us will make a bigger target for hoards,” Karkat argued. “Any troll can get outnumbered and surrounded.”

“Not me,” Sollux joked, in oddly high spirits as on screen his program failed again. “We can handle daywalkers, Karkat. Don’t stress. Besides, we’re going to be stuck together for possibly the rest of our however-long-we-get-to-live lives. It’s best to test the theory now before your ‘reciprocal death effect’ theory comes to light.”

“My original theory was a flawed piece of garbage,” Karkat protested.

“Feferi calls it the cuttlefish effect,” Sollux waved him away. “We need to learn how to get along while we can, so I say, the more the fucking merrier.”

“Seven trolls,” Karkat thought aloud, musing the crazy idea over, refusing to admit Sollux had a point. “That’s only Terezi and Tavros left out.”

“Invite her too,” Sollux suggested. “We die just as easily in space with seven as eight.”

Karkat stared behind him at the massive shape of the starcraft. It was easily twice larger than the hive above it. “Will we be ready in time?”

Sollux slapped the side of his holoscreen as another collision crashed the projection program, flashing red. “Whatever,” he muttered, more aimed at the screen than Karkat. “We’re on schedule.”

Karkat inhaled deeply, then let it out, breathing the last of his anger away. “Fine,” he allowed. “I’ll invite Terezi too. If any troll of us starts offing shipmates, it’ll be her.”

Karkat went back to the surface where Eridan was hammering steel plating over the hive’s windows, still stressing. “Have you ever dealt with daywalker hoards before?” Karkat asked.

Eridan grunted around a mouthful of nails. “Not many daywalkers by the coast,” he admitted. “But I met them plenty in FLARP. Lots of good traps had them.”

Karkat fought the urge to roll his eyes. Of course Eridan played games with the undead dayterrors. Highbloods and seadwellers had the luxury of living close enough to the Inner Sea or major hivezones that daywalkers were a distant, more exotic problem. But Karkat grew up piss-poor in a hivering by where the grassplains merged with the more woodland treetangle. It wasn’t as bad as place as the dustzone Kanaya inhabited, but these floodbasins would be a hotspot for the vermin.

“Word of advice then,” Karkat offered, hammering an armor plate into the wall beside him. “Don’t touch them. Don’t let them touch you. Stick to long distance fighting and avoid hand-to-hand at all costs. Don’t even breathe near them—hold your breath when you kill them or you might breathe in the spores.”

Eridan scoffed. “I’m no fuckin moron,” he complained. “I know how to handle them.”

“Fighting daywalkers in the field is different from crossing pits with them at the bottom in some FLARP challenge,” Karkat stated.

“I know, you can quit jawing at me,” Eridan complained, rolling a nail between his fangs. “I know they’re tough shit, alright? I had to drop a crewhand this one game who fucked around and got infected.”

Karkat blinked at him. “Is that supposed to be fucking reassuring?”

“It was a kindness,” Eridan shot back. “I was good with it. Quick. His kismesis didn’t need to have that decision thrust on her if I returned with him still aboard. That’s mercy.” He rubbed at his eyes, scrubbing hard like the rings he wore didn’t bother him. “Shit, I actually liked that one. He was a good crewmate. I compensated his kismesis afterward since I’m a good fucking captain, you hear?”

Karkat bit back his instinctive not good enough to keep him alive barb, swallowing his growl. Maybe Sollux was right on both fronts. They needed to stop going at each other’s throats before someone got killed.

...

 

Nepeta arrived just before the toxic rust-red light of the sun could edge around the crust of the planet. “Karkat!” she cried out, waving violently from her place atop the shoulders of a blueblood, tail lashing from side to side. “We’re here!”

Karkat gritted his teeth, ready to begin what was sure to be a painful, draining process. He was alone outside the hive, waiting for them to arrive. Sollux lurked just inside, ready to intervene if necessary.

“Nepeta! You’re fucking late!” Karkat stomped over to them, fuming as the sky continued to lighten dangerously. It wouldn’t turn scalding so early in the season, but that didn’t mean he wanted to watch the sun rise any more than he wanted to shove a tack through his thumb.

Nepeta scrambled down from her place on Equius’ broad shoulders, holding one leg at an angle. Her eyes were wide and sparkling with excitement. “I know! We ran into trouble on the way.” She didn’t put weight on her leg, olive-stained bandages wrapped tightly around the area.

Karkat’s anger ran out of steam at the sight of the wound. He sucked in his breath in a hiss. Nepeta danced around like the injury wasn’t a thing, gleeful. Karkat stared at her in dismay. “What the fuck happened to you?”

“Language,” Equius grunted, crossing his arms as he stared at Karkat with clear suspicion. Blued-out bruising hung heavily below the highblood’s eyes, not an injury, more like a remnant of restless days beyond number. The bags should have marked him as exhausted but his eyes were alert and watchful.

“It wasn’t anything, really,” Nepeta tried to convince him, shifting to hide her leg from view.

“A coalition of trolls seeking bounty bait thought two lone trolls traveling together were prime targets,” Equius explained, grunting. He narrowed his eyes into a mean look. “We proved them wrong, but not before Nepeta sustained an injury to her leg.” He looked past Karkat to the hive, then scowled with gap-toothed fangs. “We require safe lodging for the day.”

The sky was growing lighter by the second, a red-washed line on the far horizon, glowing against the moons.“Of course,” Karkat confirmed, thrown off rhythm from his pre-planned rant. “You were both invited. We have medical equipment inside too.” He’d meant to get things started before letting Equius inside the hive, but Nepeta’s leg looked nasty. Her eyes were a little too wide, her smile forced.

Equius looked around the front hivering, taking in the dead grass and ash heap of burned junk, the metal bits that the fire didn’t destroy, the twisted shells of gutted technology and furniture frames. Somehow, the mirror was unbroken, it’s face awash with the thin red line of dawn. He dug in his heels, squared his stance stubbornly. “You live here?”

Karkat wasn’t stupid enough to take the question as innocent. “Me and Sollux,” he lied, knowing Eridan was below ground with the ship.

Equius stared at him, nostrils flared. Karkat stared back, bold and unintimidated by the much larger highblood.

Nepeta broke their silent conflict, swatting at Equius’ bare shoulder. “Stop that! They’re friends, silly. No fighting.”

Karkat did not like the way Equius didn’t take his eyes off him even as he relented. “Of course. I do have my manners. I’ll keep the peace if they uphold their own.”

“Great!” Nepeta said, but her joy sounded forced and painful.

“Come on in. No one wants to be outside when the sun rises,” Karkat said, turning back to the hive door. Nepeta shot forward eagerly, limping severely, and Equius followed slower. It was either trust Karkat or risk another day outside and the highblood grated under the lack of better options. He went inside the doorway. His eyes watched everything.

This was not the way Karkat had wanted this to go. Equius was too wary, too alert. The massive blueblood was dense but not stupid. Sadly, he was probably a genius in his own right. Whatever friendly visit Nepeta had spun him, it was clear he wasn’t buying it and expected whatever trap he though they were setting up.

Tense with nerves, Karkat stood silently as Equius shut the door behind himself, dutifully engaging the locks. He did a double-take when he encountered the special ones Sollux had installed, saw the reinforced siege-gates wielded over the windows. The hive was a fortress he’d just gotten locked in to. He didn’t react to walking into a supposed killbox aside from crossing his arms and moving closer to his moirail.

Sollux gazed coolly at the highblood, one eyebrow raised over one ruby-red eye. “This is him?”

Equius stiffened at the sight of the psionic, uncertainty showing in the tense line of his shoulders for the first time as he took in the double-horns and bi-colored eyes. He might have not thought Karkat was a true physical hazard but no troll looked at Sollux and thought anything but ‘threat’.

And Sollux was grinning like he knew it. “Lighten the fuck up, asshole,” he said, half-bait, half real advice. “You look like we’re going to start throwing knives at you.”

Equius faltered, eyes darting around the livingblock like he expected knives to launch out the walls.

“Shit-everlasting,” Karkat cursed, sighing as he moved into the small grubblock. “Let’s take a look at your leg, Nepeta. No one’s throwing knives, relax.”

This wasn’t the plan he’d gone over with Sollux, but his moirail did him the rare kindness of trusting him. Sollux didn’t spare him one confused look, simply drifting into the grubblock like the shift in plans didn’t happen. It made a warm, distracting feeling flutter through Karkat’s chest. Sollux was a better actor than Karkat realized.

Nepeta hopped up on the tabletop, one leg stretched out in front of her. Sollux whistled, impressed. “What did that?”

“Gunshot,” Nepeta answered brightly, unwinding her bandages. “A real one, not a laser one.”

“I believe the bone is fine,” Equius said, tentative. “It’s only a flesh wound.”

“Bullshit,” Karkat snorted, already annoyed at the lie. He understood why Equius wouldn’t want them to think Nepeta was anything but fine, but this unhelpful garbage bravado could be deadly. “I know you don’t trust us, but don’t insult us either. We’re on your side, moron.”

“There are no sides,” Equius stated, and Karkat tensed but for once Sollux didn’t intentionally make the situation worse. The silent display of trust from Sollux made his hands shaky. He had to pull this off.

Karkat dug some fresh bandages out of his sylladex while Sollux got some clean water to wash up.

The help didn’t endear them to Equius any. Instead, he cut off Sollux with one arm, blocking him from approaching the table. “I can take things from here.”

Sollux shrugged and with a burst of red and blue, he floated the bowl over to the table without spilling a drop. Equius flinched back from the show of mental power like he’d never seen psionics before, then gritted his fangs in a snarl.

“Cut it out, both of you,” Karkat ordered, treading the thin line of attempting to keep things peaceful. If Equius, even when properly curtailed, would only act like a threat, this would never work. “No one is fighting anyone! We’re friends here, so stop acting like wrigglers.”

“I can take it from here,” Equius gritted out, stubborn and defensive.

Nepeta was watching him, unsure. She might have been in on it but she didn’t know what Karkat was doing any more than Sollux did.

“I know,” Karkat didn’t argue, and he dipped his head to help Nepeta with her leg. This wasn’t something normally done between non-quadranted trolls. Equius had been right to insist on caring for his moirail himself, this wasn’t how things worked, but that was the problem, wasn’t it? Alternian society had more flaws than simply dividing them by bloodcaste. There wasn’t any map for this, no precedent for Karkat to follow. If he wanted to pull nine trolls together to defy the Empire, he might as well start by breaking the social codes that made sure trolls could never trust one another enough to ever band together. Plus proving that care wasn’t an isolated concept might keep them alive in inhospitable space.

Equius growled at him, low and dangerous as a tremor in the earth. He was a big troll and even his growl sounded like he had the strength to put Karkat through a wall.

Karkat owed Sollux more credit; he didn’t react to the noise at all, only watched silently. Karkat swallowed thickly, hiding how nervous he was.

“Come off it, Equius,” Nepeta said, tired. “It’s okay. He won’t hurt me.”

Equius narrowed his eyes into thin slits. “I must insist that you step away from them.”

Nepeta rolled her eyes, huffing. “Are you a mediculler now? Last I checked if it wasn’t miswired it wasn’t something you were familiar with.” She finished revealing the wound, peeling the sticky bandages away from where they’d dried to her skin. The wound wasn’t as small as Karkat had hoped, its edges angry and raw, dangerously close to the tendon. It bled freely once the pressure was removed from it, worrying for such an old puncture. She flaunted her leg at him, dripping green across the table. “Is this really something you can handle on your own?”

Karkat heard the blueblood’s teeth snap together. His hands were in fists. He didn’t argue, but he didn’t need to. “You could,” he told her, almost an accusion.

Karkat didn’t doubt it. Nepeta had been taking care of herself for sweeps, and for as bad as this was, it wasn’t anything fatal. “You don’t have to do things on your own all the time,” Karkat stated, and he handed Nepeta the roll of bandages.

She expertly cleaned and dressed the wound with sure fingers, unflinching as she wrapped it up again even though it must hurt like a bitch. She flexed her foot when she was done, testing the range of motion before hopping down.

She grinned at Equius, beaming, but he wasn’t focused on her.

Equius was looking at Karkat strangely. “Why are you dressed like that?”

Karkat looked down at himself, slightly thrown. He wasn’t in anything special, just his normal outfit. “Is that a dig at my horns? I know they’re small and stupid but really? That’s what you’re going to do? Insult my nubby horns?”

Equius’ voice was flat. “You’re not wearing your hatchsign.”

Nepeta froze and Karkat caught a spark pop off Sollux’s horns from across the room. He took a deep breath. “No, I’m not,” he sighed. This would be easier if the blueblood had been a moron. It was time to test how far his plan would get them.

Equius didn’t seem to understand the concept. “Why not? That is the proper wardrobe for trolls.”

Karkat shrugged. “I just didn’t feel like it.”

Damn him, but something flashed through the highblood’s eyes, some realization that sank in. “What is your bloodcaste?” It wasn’t a sly move but it didn’t have to be.

Karkat busied himself with dumping out the bloody water in the sink. He didn’t turn around as he answered. “Red.”

He finished washing out the bowl in silence. Sollux loudly cleared his throat and Karkat slowly turned back to face them.

Equius looked confused. Whatever reason he thought for Karkat hiding his bloodcolor, it wasn’t for something as outrageously impossible as being off-spectrum. “Repeat yourself. I must not have heard you correctly.”

“You did,” Karkat stated, firm and daring. “I am a mutant red. I don’t have a hatchsign.”

Equius was blinking rapidly. “That’s treason,” he said on automatic, darting his eyes between Karkat and Sollux and an unsurprised Nepeta and not liking what he saw. “It’s a violation of the law.”

Karkat scoffed. “Yeah, sure. Whatever. Me out here all alone in a hive no one gives a shit about just living my life, that’s treason.” He snorted loudly, putting the bowl away inside the shitty cabinet. “What a load of bullshit. That’s stupid. It’s a stupid law that exists and I guess I am breaking it in the Empire’s eyes, but it’s not treason. Treason is me actively acting against the Empire, which being off-spectrum does not automatically equal. Being red is just being me.” He paused, considering the highblood’s rapidly paling face. “Now, the starcraft I’m building in the basement for the purpose of overthrowing the Empress and toppling her Empire, that’s fucking treason.”

 

Equius was smart enough that when he lunged, it was at Sollux and not Karkat. He was even fast enough to equip his strife specibus and throw something probably deadly with perfect aim.

It wasn’t enough. Sollux froze him in place instantly, catching the slung dart and plucking it out of the air with red/blue fire. The scent of ozone filled the air.

Nepeta tackled Karkat to the ground at the first hint of trouble, jostling her leg enough that she yowled in pain before she jumped up again once she saw Sollux had Equius bound. “Don’t hurt him!”

“I’m not,” Sollux rolled his eyes. “It’s just a body hold. He’s fine.”

Equius’ eyes were darting wildly around from where Sollux had him locked down, one arm pulled back to deliver a blow with knuckles capped in steel that would most likely decapitate any troll unlucky enough to take a direct hit.

Karkat scrambled up off the floor, dusting himself off. “What the flying fuck,” he sighed. “I was hoping that would go better.”

“It didn’t go worse,” Sollux consoled him. “And I doubt there was a best-case scenario at all.”

Nepeta bit her lip, tail twitching. “He’s been on edge since the bounty hunters,” she explained, torn. “He doesn’t like violence and he hated that I’d gotten hurt.” She circled around him, wary of the red and blue that had him. “Are you sure he’s okay?”

“He’s fine,” Sollux promised. “I can make it hurt but I’m being careful not to.”

Nepeta gave him a grateful look.

There was a noise from down the hallway and Eridan peeked sheepishly into view. He took in the sight of the captured blueblood. “Okay, I’m good to stop hiding, right?”

Karkat scrubbed his eyes hard enough he saw spots. “Let’s get this over with.”

Sollux floated Equius down the hall and into the hidden entrance to the lavetube, then down the tunnel until he could handcuff the highblood to a separate grid with cuffs he’d promised were strong enough to keep the blueblood from getting free.

Eridan stared curiously at Nepeta. She ignored him but the fur on her tail bristled.

“Alright,” Sollux said once he’d secured the blueblood in place. “I’m letting him go.”

The glow extinguished itself from around Equius’ frame. He was fighting even before the last of the sparks died out, yanking against the cuffs, wrenching his wrists hard enough that dust rained down from the ceiling where he pulled at where the steel grid was embedded in the roof of the cave. He snarled, fangs bared as he kicked.

It was a terrifying sight to behold. Karkat was half sure the highblood would kill them all with his teeth if he could. Not even Gamzee had looked that enraged.

“Let him work it out,” Sollux suggested, nonplussed by the display. “He’ll calm once he realizes he’s trapped.”

Nepeta ignored him. She walked right up to where Equius thrashed like a pinned animal and caught his chin between her claws. He froze, eyes wide behind the glasses she carefully removed and tucked out of sight. She brushed his long hair out of his face, slow and tender.

“Why?” Equius asked with baffled, heartbroken pain. There wasn’t even anger in his face anymore—just grief.

She leaned in close to frame his face with her palms, lifting his head to meet her steady gaze. “This is not a betrayal,” she said softly. “Our diamonds are strong enough to withstand trials such as this. I am acting out of pale pity for you and nothing more. So you, my meowrail, are going to sit here and fucking listen to what we have to say!”

Equius looked dazed enough that he didn’t react to the expletive. He’d stopped struggling, unresisting as she held him.

The scene was too intimate for Karkat to comfortably acknowledge, but Equius didn’t stay peaceful for long. “I can fix this,” he said, desperate, jangling the cuffs that held him. “Let me fix this. I can get us out of here. No one needs to know.”

Nepeta simply shook her head. “No,” she said. “It’s too late for that.”

“No,” Equius said, rejecting it. The blueblood locked eyes with Eridan, his lips lifting into a snarl. “Seadweller,” he spat out. “You’re the one behind this grievous offense. Release me immediately.”

Eridan shrugged, unbothered as he flicked his ear fins. “You can’t blame me for any of this,” he said, waving around the lavatube at the scaffolding and spaceship taking form. “This bullshit is all on him.” He pointed at Karkat.

Equius drug his disbelieving eyes across the cave, snarl fading as he took in the construction around them. “What is this?”

Nepeta gently turned his face to look at her again. “It’s treason,” she whispered. “It is treason against the Empire itself, treason that I am a part of. And now, so are you.”

He shook his head, voice tight. “No, Nepeta, they’ll kill you.”

“The Empire is going to kill me any way,” Nepeta stated, steel and iron. “And kill you too.” She turned to the lavatube, to the fleetship approximation taking shape. “This is how I’m saving you.” She turned to the psionic. “Sollux?”

Sollux decaptchalouged the datapad he’d prepared from within his sylladex and surrendered it. She deftly switched it on and thumbed through the files until she reached what Karkat had asked the goldblood to prepare.

Nepeta crouched down beside her trapped moirail, crossing her legs beneath herself. “Leave us.”

Eridan looked like he’d object so Karkat gave him a shove towards the tunnel door. The highblood was unmoved by Karkat’s shove but got the point. Karkat snapped at Sollux too until he followed after them, frowning all the while.

Karkat went up the tunnel back to the hive, dusting off his hands on his pants.

Sollux’s brows were drawn with unease and irritation. “I don’t like leaving them alone down there,” he flatlined, nearly a hiss. “He could destroy a lot of shit before I can get back to stop him.”

“You said the cuffs would hold,” Karkat shot back, pacing the short hallway.

“So far,” Sollux stressed. “But that troll’s not an ordinary blueblood. He could probably beat any troll in strength, except maybe Feferi.”

“Hey,” Eridan said, offended. “I could take him.”

“No, you couldn’t.” Sollux laughed like he was enjoying the image. “He’s fistkind, a close-range expert. He’d rip your head off.”

“Cut it out,” Karkat snapped at them, working well-worn holes into the carpet with his pacing. “We have to let Nepeta talk him down. She knows how to handle him.”

“And once he sees what I’ve prepared,” Sollux exclaimed, perking up and the reminder of his cruel trick. “He’ll know he won’t have a choice. The Empire will never have him after this.”

“What’d you do?” Eridan asked curiously.

Sollux grinned, sly and slightly evil. “I wrote a manifesto about how much he hates the Empire attached to a virus that right now is already uploaded within fleet servers. It will automatically detonate before Ascension Day, starting a hostile hack that will have his name and face smeared all over it.”

Eridan’s interested look turned to stumped horror. “You fuckin what?”

“Genius, right?” Sollux preened. “It was Karkat’s idea. The added musclebeast bulges sent to highblooded officers was mine.”

Eridan hawed a laugh.

Karkat rubbed at his tired eyes. “Give them some privacy,” he stressed. “Let them jam it out in peace.”

Eridan glanced back at the mouth of the tunnel. “Fuck,” he said, low and drawn-out. “That’s some wild shit. I… I don’t think I could do something like that. Turn on Fef, even if it was for her own good.” His ear fins drooped, halfway pinned back.

Sollux shrugged and slouched his way back to the communalblock. Eridan stared at Karkat for a moment longer, digging the tip of one boot into the floor. “Do you think she’ll convince him?”

Karkat exhaled in a huff. “I do,” he said. “Nepeta’s the best shipper on-planet. Without her, me and Sollux wouldn’t have worked out as moirails. If she thinks she can bring him around, I’ll trust that.”

Eridan looked back at the mouth of the tunnel. “She’s very brave,” he said quietly. “To risk a quadrant like this.”

“Yeah,” Karkat agreed, also slightly awed. He forced himself to focus. “But it’s for the best.”

Eridan looked disquieted but went back to the grubblock. Karkat stayed in the short hallway, switching between pacing from side to side and sliding down the wall to soak in his stress. It was early morning but he couldn’t sleep until this had been resolved. The threat of failure was too high to risk a nap.

While he waited for the palemates down below to jam things out, Karkat turned over things in his thinkpan, trying to see how to fit them together. Nepeta could figure trolls out, could get all of their pieces to click together, and he would too through sheer stubborn force of will if needed. Eridan would never go against Feferi in a similar situation; he’d been right to voice that as fact. The seadweller had been in the wrong often enough before the Heiress straightened him out that he’d lost confidence in his own moral compass. He relied entirely on her to decide right from the wrong. It was convenient for now but Karkat could see it becoming a future problem.

Likewise, for as much as Karkat trusted Nepeta, Equius was a major problem. He was an unknown factor that Karkat wasn’t familiar with. All he really knew about the blueblood was that he was Nepeta’s moirail and a good machinist, overprotective and indoctrinated with hemocaste ideals that he clung stubbornly to. He was deadly, freakishly strong, and more far intelligent than his brutish physique suggested.

Nepeta claimed he hated violence and had a good heart. The most Karkat had seen of this was the overprotective instant murder attempt, which was…. sort of justified?

Karkat growled and hit the back of his skull against the wall. Maybe he could jostle his thoughts into order if for once causality wasn’t breathing down his fucking neck for five seconds, threatening to kill all of his friends as their deadline shrank around him.

Right on schedule, Kanaya messaged him.

GA: I Have Decided That In Order To Reach Your Hive In The Safest And Most Timely Manner Non-Stop Motion Is The Best Way To Go. Which Means I Will Continue To Push Forward While The Sun Is Up.
GA: This Is Not As Dangerous An Undertaking For Me As It Would Be For Most Trolls. I Quite Enjoy The Morning Sun. It’s Warmth Does Not Burn Me As It Should. Instead, I Find It Comforting.
CG: AT LEAST I HAVE THE SECURITY TO NOT WORRY ABOUT YOU MOVING IN DAYLIGHT, YOU LIGHT-LOVING FREAK. YOU’LL BE SAFE FROM OTHER TROLLS AND MOST ROUGE LUSII TOO. IF YOU SEE DAYWALKERS I’M SURE YOU’LL BE ABLE TO HANDLE THEM.
GA: Living Where I Do, Slaughtering Daywalkers Is Something of A Hobby Rather Than A Necessary Life Skill. A Horde Will Be No Match For Me.
GA: But I Digress. How Are Things Progressing On Your End? I Was Talking To Terezi Earlier And She Mentioned That She’d Be Making Her Way Over Soon As Well.
CG: YEAH, I WENT AHEAD AND INVITED MOST OF US. SOLLUX THINKS HE NEEDS MORE BODIES TO TEST HIS LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS BEFORE WE PUT THEM TO THE LIFE-OR-DEATH TEST OF ACTUALLY RELYING ON THEM.
CG: AND I THINK IT’S IMPORTANT FOR US TO GET USED TO LIVING IN CLOSE PROXIMITY BEFORE WE MAIM EACH OTHER IN SPACE OVER THE SLIGHTEST PERCEIVED OFFENSE, BECAUSE JUST TO MAKE MY LIFE EVEN MORE DIFFICULT, ALL OF OUR FRIENDS ARE SELF-ABSPOBED ASSHOLES WHO ARE EITHER ALLERGIC TO TEAMWORK OR ACTIVILY WANT TO ENACT THE REVENGE-MURDER UPON ANOTHER OF OUR GROUP.
CG: POINT IN CASE: EQUIUS AND NEPETA ARRIVED TONIGHT AND IT TOOK LESS THAN TWENTY MINUTES BEFORE HE ATTEMTED TO KILL BOTH ME AND SOLLUX. IT SPEAKS TO MY MENTAL STATE THAT I’M NOT EVEN FUCKING SURPRISED AT THIS.
GA: I Can’t Imagine That Task Going Too Well For Him.
CG: IT DIDN’T, SOLLUX HANDLED IT, THE PLAN WORKED IN THAT REGARD AT LEAST.
CG: IT’S JUST… IF WE PICK THE WRONG TROLLS TO JOIN US—IT’S OVER. EVERYBODY FUCKING DIES. THAT’S A LOT OF STRESS TO SHOULDER ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE I HAVE TO CARRY. MY SPINE HOLDS UP UNTOLD LEGIONS, KANAYA. I CARRY A WEIGHT YOU CAN’T IMAGINE.
CG: AND BEAR WITH MY MELODRAMATIC BULLSHIT FOR A MOMENT, OKAY? LISTEN TO THIS.
CG: I DON’T WANT TO SAVE JUST US. I’M TRYING TO THINK SWEEPS IN ADVANCE BUT KEEP TRIPPING OVER TOMORROW’S FUCKED UP ISSUES LIKE IT’S A GAME OF CATCH-THE-SHITWEASEL. I CAN’T STEP FORWARD FOR TOMORROW SHOVING ME THE FUCK BACKWARD LIKE ITS SOME DEMENTED OIL-SLICKED STAIRWAY. THE FUTURE ITSELF IS WORKING AGAINST ME, I KNOW IT. IT’S AS KNOWN A UNIVERSAL CONCEPT AS GRAVITY ITSELF AND JUST AS INESCAPABLE. THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE /HATES/ ME.
GA: Karkat, I Mean This In The Nicest Possible Way-
GC: OH FUCK. THIS IS IT, ISN’T IT, THE CUMUPPANCE OF MY PAST ACTIONS? EVERY SOUR WORD I’VE EVER MISTAKENLY SPAT AT YOU OVER TROLLIAN WHILE IN THE GRIPS OF MY RAGEFUL SELF-INFLICTED SHAME HAS COME DUE.
GA: …
GA: My Patience Is Wearing Thin.
GA: If You’re Not Going To Take Me Seriously I Will Refrain From Trolling You, Maybe I’ll Even Stoop So Low As To Give You The Proverbial ‘Cold Shoulder’ Once I Arrive.
CG: WOULD YOU REALLY?
GA: Keep Blathering About Tangents You Twist To Your Own Selfish Whims And You’ll See.
CG: OUCH, KANAYA. WHAT’S GOT YOU FEELING SO VICIOUS?
GA: Look, We Have All Entrusted You With Our Lives And Futures. The Least You Could Do Is Inspire Some Confidence In Your Abilities Rather Than Berate Your Own Plan Every Other Breath.
GA: I Know Part Of It Is Simply How You Act, Inflating The Issue So Out Of Proportion That It’s Shadow Blots Out The Moons With Your Petulant Musings. I Dare Say I’m Even Used To The Characteristic Inward Hate and Self-Doubt You Saturate Your Conversations With. But If The Goal Is To Work Together, Other Trolls Who Are Not As Used To Your Rants As I Unfortunately Am May Take Your Nihilism As Truth.
GA: I Have No Doubt You Are Facing True Trials Karkat, But Bemoaning Every Slightest Brush With Disaster As Gospel That You’re Doomed To Fail Is In No One’s Best Interest, Least Of All Your Own.
GA: In Other Words, Grow The Fuck Up. There Are More Things at Risk Here Than Our Lives Or Your Misplaced Pride.
CG: HOLY SHIT.
CG: WHAT THE FUCK? WHAT THE FUCK! DO MY EYES DECEIVE ME OR HAS KANAYA FUCKING MARYAM DECIDED AT LONG LAST TO GROW A POSTUREPOLE AND STORM OUT OF HER DESERT ISOLATION-KINGDOM MISTAKENLY IDENTIFIED AS AN OASIS AND FUCK SHIT UP BY GETTING ON THE SAME PAGE AT FUCKING LAST?!?! HAS SHE CHOSEN A SIDE AND DECIDED TO STOP MEERLY WATCHING THE HAPPENINGS OF THE WORLD PASS HER BY?
CG: HOLY FUCK, SOMEONE ALERT THE AUTHORITIES! KANAYA MEDDLES FROM AFAR NO LONGER! THE COLLECTIVE COMMUNITY OF THE PEANUT GALLERY I’VE FORMED OVER HERE LAUGH AND THEN COMMIT MASS EXALTATIONS TO WHATEVER DIVINE ENTITY INTERVEINED TO CAUSE THIS MIRACULOUS OCCURANCE.
GA: Oh Fuck Off Karkat. I Am Only Trying To Help.
GA: If You’d Prefer I Can Go Back To My Desert Hive And Leave You To Squabble Yourselves To A Timely Fate. You Scarecly Need My Help To Achieve That Front. Any Troll In Your Company For Too Long Will Undertake Whatever Necessary To Distance Themselves From You, With No Action Too Extreme.
GA: Wait.
GA: What Am I Saying?
CG: WHAT /ARE/ YOU SAYING? I’M STARTING TO GET SOME PRETTY MIXED SIGNALS OVER HERE. I THINK I’M GOING TO VOMIT UP EVERY ORGAN CONTAINED WITHIN MY SKELETON UNTIL I’M A SOGGY LIMP BODY-SHAPED FLESHSACK, THEN DECAY INTO A PUDDLE ON THE FLOOR. I THINK THAT WOULD BE PREFERABLE TO HAVING YOU THROW INSULTS AT ME THAT I CAN’T HELP BUT READ AS CALIGUNUS.
CG: AND THAT’S JUST FUCKING GROSS.
GA: Oh No. This Is Not What I Wanted At All. The Current Animosity I’m Feeling Towards You Is Entirely Platonic In Nature, I Reassure You.
GA: Look, You Make It Very Difficult To Hold A Cordial Conversation With You Without Mistakenly Letting Slip Romantic Aspirations Of A Black Nature Simply Because You Are Angry All Of The Time And Have A Bad Habit Of Fucking Up On Such Inconceivable Levels That Insulting Your Mistakes Is Almost A Reflex. I Have Zero Interest In Pursuing You In Any Quadrant, Kismetitude Least Of Them All.
CG: WELL THAT’S ONE BAREST RELEIF TO THE UNENDING TORMENT OF MY EXISTANCE. AT LEAST I HAVN’T ATTRACTED THE BLACK ATTENTION OF THE MOST UPTIGHT TROLL IN ALL HISTORY. ONE LESS MARK ON MY SHAME TALLY.
GA: See? This Right Here Is Exactly What I Am Talking About. You Loop Us All Into Some Extant Reach-Around Of Your Self-Flagellation Until You Own Self Hate Bleeds Through And Confuses Us. Stop It. Your Bullshit Serves Nothing By Being Contagious.
CG: REALLY? THAT’S WHY THIS KEEPS BEING A THING THAT HAPPENS TO ME? THAT’S WHY I’M CONSTANTLY FENDING OFF TROLLS WHO THINK I’M COMING ONTO THEM?
GA: Sometimes It Is Exhausting Being Your Friend.
CG: HOLY SHIT. I NEVER WOULD HAVE GUESSED.
GA: I Don’t Think I Would Have Put Up With It For This Long If You Didn’t Always say Things That I Needed To Hear While In The Grips Of Your Moody Bullshit. Its… Difficult, Being As Alone As I Have Been These Last Few Sweeps. I Have Not Had Anyone Who Dares To Tell Me The Hard Truths.
GA: Maybe I Have Been Watching And Not Acting For Too Long. I Fear I Haven’t Been An Active Participant In Nearly Anything Since Team Charge Fell Apart And The Scourge Sisters Broke Up, Content To Mind My Topiaries And My Tapestries And Simply Wait For The Future To Arrive Along A Pre-Destined Path That I Disregarded Coming To Terms With.
GA: Even After Your Invitation To Commit Acts Of Treason I Hesitated In Deciding Any One Way To Respond. I Had Almost Decided To Simply Ignore You Until The Deadline Had Passed.
CG: WHAT CHANGED?
GA: In A Way I Suppose I Did. I’d Been Clinging To The Idea Of Somehow Helping The Other Jadebloods Within The Brooding Caverns After Ascension Day With No Real Course Of Action Aside From Surviving And Simply Going From There.
GA: And Then, The Strangest Thing Happened.
CG: WHAT?
GA: It Was Like I Woke Up. I Looked Around My Empty Hive And Realized For The First Time In A Long Time That I Wasn’t Happy And Hadn’t Been In A Long Time. I Realized That I Haven’t Been Happy Since Vriska’s Betrayal.
GA: So I Trolled Her For The First Time In Over A Sweep.
CG: HOLY SHIT, YOU DID /NOT/.
GA: I Regret To Say I Did. It Was A Momentary Weakness On My Part.
CG: DID SHE ANSWER YOU BACK? WHAT DID SHE SAY?
GA: We Did Not Speak For Long.
GA: She… Well, We Aired Out Past Grievances To No Great Moment Of Catharsis On Either Side, Only Virulent Regrets and Simmering Hostilities.
GA: She Is Salted Ground, Karkat. She Will Let Nothing Break Through Her Bitterness. Not Even Me.
GA: And I Thought To Myself, Where Had I Gone Wrong? How Had I Not Seen This In Time? Why Was I Still Clinging To Some False Idea That If I Simply Waited, If I Gave Her The Time And The Space To Come Around, That She Would Soften And… I Don’t Even Know. It Was A Foolish Attempt, Doomed From The Start.
GA: She Does Not Deserve My Patience. My Wrigglerhood Pale Fling Had Ended Over A Sweep Ago And All I Was Doing Was Clinging To Its Desiccated Corpse.
GA: And If I Had Been So Very Wrong About Her, What Else Might I Have Been Wrong About? Hiding In My Hive? My Elusive Dreams Of Grandeur Within The Brooding Caverns?
GA: I Woke Up To Realize I had Been Living A Lie On Several Fronts. And I Wasn’t Keen On Repeating Past Mistakes.
CG: YOU FIGURED ALL OF THIS OUT WITHOUT HAVING A TOP-NOTCH MOIRAIL TO BEAT IT THROUGH YOUR THICK SKULLCASE?
GA: I’m Rather Proud To Say I Did.
CG: FUUUUUUUCK, THAT’S AMAZING.
GA: Thank You. It Is Quite The Achievement.
CG: YOU ACTUALLY FUCKING MESSAGED HER. I CAN’T BELIEVE IT. YOU MUST HAVE THE GLOBES OF A MUSCLEBEAST, THE SHEER FUCKING GALL OF LEVIATHANS, YOU GLORIOUS BASTARD. I’D RATHER VOLENTARILY CRAWL HEAD-FIRST DOWN A DISEASED CHOLERBEAR’S THROAT THAN TROLL VRISKA.
CG: TALKING TO HER IS LIKE STICKING MY BULGE DOWN A GARBAGE DISPOSAL FILLED WITH BROKEN GLASS AND HITTING PUREE. I FEEL LIKE THE GARBAGE DISPLOSAL WOULD BE THE KINDER OPTION.
CG: NO OFFENSE, SHE IS YOUR EX AFTER ALL.
GA: None Taken. I Understand How Unpleasant Her Disposition Has Become. I Used To Have All Of These Excuses For Her Behavior, But Now I Don’t. She Is Who She Is, And Who She Is Isn’t A Troll I Wish To Associate With.
CG: WOULD IT BE TOO WEIRD AND OUT OF BOUNDS FOR ME TO SAY I’M KINDA PROUD OF YOU? AS A FRIEND?
GA: I Think It Would Be Appropriate Considering Our Past History.
CG: GOOD, BECAUSE I’M FUCKING PROUD OF YOU, KANAYA. THAT TOOK GUTS AND BRAZEN DETERMINATION. I'M’ACTUALLY A BIT INTIMIDATED BY HOW EMOTIONALLY COMPETENT YOU ARE.
GA: It’s a Skill I Hope You Will Learn Soon.
CG: LUCK WILLING, I GUESS. WHATEVER GETS US OFF THE GROUND.
CG: YOU’LL BE HERE SOON?
GA: Potentially By Late Evening If I’m Not Interrupted By Unforeseen Struggle.
CG: OKAY. I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO HAVING YOU AROUND AGAIN. I MISSED YOU, KANAYA. WE ALL DID.
CG: I’VE GOTTA GO NOW AND MAKE SURE EQUIUS ISN’T ABOUT TO CLAW HIS WAY THROUGH SEVERAL TONS OF SOLID ROCK IN A BID FOR FREEDOM.
GA: Don’t Worry. If I Can See The Err Of My Ways And Come Around, So Will He.
CG: ONLY IF HE COOLS OFF ENOUGH FOR REASON TO KICK IN.
CG: ALRIGHT, THANKS FOR SPEAKING WITH ME. DON’T GET EATEN ON THE WAY HERE, OKAY?
GA: I Will Try. I’ll Be There Shortly So If Something Does Eat Me, I Fully Expect You To Avenge My Untimely Demise With The Appropriate Degree Of Violence.

Karkat recaptchalouged his palmhusk after agreeing, more relieved than he would have guessed at her change of heart. It was one piece of his puzzle that’s fallen into line at last.

He went back down to check on the general temperament of another puzzle piece.

Equius sat cross-legged on the ground where Karkat had left him, but his hands were free and sitting limply in his lap. The opened frondlocks were discarded on the rocky floor beside him. It wasn’t anything too scandalous. Nepeta sat across from him, matching his position, the picture of ease across from every line of tense muscle from the blueblood. While the sight of the unlocked cuffs made every move the bigger troll made into a deadly threat, Karkat didn’t react as the highblood looked up at him.

Nepeta was the best fucking moirail on the planet, because Equius didn’t smear Karkat’s body across the cave wall on sight, because while uneasy and distraught the troll was rational. “Karkat.”

Karkat dipped his chin at him, a short, nearly respectful gesture. “Equius.”

Equius’ struggled against baring teeth at him but succeeded with a strange half-grimace that showed his gapped fangs. “You are a mutant.” It wasn’t a question.

“And you are a blueblood,” Karkat answered back. He didn’t come closer. “We don’t get to choose what we are.”

“Only what we do with it,” Nepeta finished, and she stretched and stood, holding some weight on her injured leg.

Equius stood too, and without the safety net of Sollux’s helpful psionics to counter that brute strength Karkat had to fight not to draw his sickles. The troll loomed with every inch of height he had over Karkat. It was stupid to go into this unarmed, but he gritted his teeth and did it anyway.

“How much has she told you?” Karkat asked curiously, waving at the shape of the starcraft, its empty shell. “About this?”

Equius peered around the huge space of the cave, at the clutter and clash of the technological guts that wormed about each surface, the ship that dominated the underground block. His voice was a quiet grumble. “Enough.” He crossed his arms over his thick chest. “Was the hostile virus necessary?”

Karkat crossed his arms too, not backing down. “Partly.”

Equius looked unsettled but that part made the most sense out of anything in this situation. “Was that your idea?”

“Yeah,” Karkat lifted his chin.

“This too?” Equius set one hand against the grid that arched up into the ceiling above them, the core of the starcraft itself.

“Yes.” Karkat stood his ground. “You have questions? Maybe I can answer some of them, but the more technical bits are outside of my area of expertise.”

Equius grumbled again, a low noise as he stared around the cave. “Why me?” He asked, honest confusion on his face. “There are far less risky machinists out there than me, my quadrant with Nepeta aside.”

Karkat stared back as he pondered the fair question. “Nepeta swore you have a good heart,” he said truthfully. “I was more interested in that part than your roboticary and wielding skills.”

For a troll who’d had the proverbial treason-sized rug snatched from under him multiple times in the last few hours, Equius looked the most rattled by this. “And the seadweller?”

“Is a part of this too,” Karkat stated firmly. He turned to Nepeta. “Kanaya, Terezi, and Feferi will be arriving soon. Living space in the hive will be crammed but you’ll each have separate areas and recuperacoons. I at least want you to try to get along with everyone, impossible as I know it sounds, but if we’re going to get this to work we’ll need to know how to live together without constant murder attempts.” He straightened up, eyeing both of them. “I know it sounds weird, but the Fleet functions much the same with the in space no wanton-culling rules. If they can do it, so will we.”

He stared hard at Equius. “So?” He asked. “What will it be? Are you with us or do I have to stress about you strangling me in my sleep?”

Equius snorted, huffing. “I would not do something so underhanded,” he protested. “It’s beneath me.”

Karkat raised his eyebrows, unimpressed. “Is that supposed to be fucking reassuring?”

Equius merely narrowed his eyes, shifty. Nepeta elbowed him hard in the ribs and he glanced at her, his gaze softening. “I don’t have a choice, do I?” He asked, and the question wasn’t directed at Karkat at all.

Nepeta held her head high. “You do,” she told him. “You always have a choice, Equius. Sometimes, though, it can be hard to make the right one. Not without a little help.”

Equius gave her a frank stare. “Is this your definition of a ‘little’ help?” He asked, frowning. “Getting locked to a gridcage by some mudcaste psionic is in no way ‘little’.” He crossed his arms over his chest.

Karkat scowled at him, irritated. “Hey, that’s my fucking moirail you nitwit,” he snapped, part of him warm from just the admittance of it, the intimacy of claiming Sollux as a quadrantmate. “Don’t insult him in front of me, and by the blessed wretchedness of every unholy abomination in the sky—don’t insult him to his face either, not unless you want to keep your skin on your bones.”

“Yes, the psionic,” Equius growled, and Karkat bristled at the noise. “How… unexpected. I was not anticipating that a lowblood could overpower me.”

Karkat chuckled, already anticipating it. “Oh, it’s worse than you think,” he bragged. “Sollux isn’t terrifying because he can atomize trolls at a glance; that’s just a fun bonus skill.” Equius cut his annoying threat behavior out for long enough that Karkat could finish. “Prepare to get your shit thoroughly rocked, bulgebrain! Being overpowered is the least of your concerns. Sollux can out-think an overclocked husktop grid, outmaneuver each one simultaneously, and then run rings around the processing cores until they explode from the shame of it.” He laughed at the confounded look on the blueblood’s face. “No offense to you, Equius, I’m sure you’re a real genius and everything, but we need to invent a new word to describe Sollux’s level of skill.”

Equius decaptchalouged the datapad from earlier, claws tapping at the manifesto that tied his hands and damned him. “This virus is surprisingly well done,” he admitted. “Even if I worked on it from now until it’s detonation date, I doubt I could crack it.” He scrolled through the full load of the program, his frown deepening. “The goldblood designed this?”

“The ship too,” Karkat said proudly. “Everything is already planned out and finished. We just need to put it together. A ship is different from a killbot, but,” Karkat shrugged, trailing off. “Do you think you can manage it?”

Equius expertly opened and rifled through the datapad’s files, examining the info displayed there. He thumbed through the controls and a hologram sprang up, showcasing the empty shell of the starcraft itself. He hit a button and before Karkat’s astonished eyes, the holorgram began to move, lines crawling, colors twisting, code solidifing until the finished product floated proudly before the three of them, something sleek, elegant, and efficient. The finished ship looked beyond spaceworthy. It looked like it could outrun a voidmouth itself, skip along the rims of black holes, dance through meteor fields like a fucking party.

Even Equius raised his eyebrows at the sight, then frowned when he compared the completed projection to the current empty shell of the ship where it sat locked belowground. “We have only perigees to work with?”

Karkat nodded, secretly thrilled at the word we. “Everyone’s pitching in,” he said. “They’ll be eight of us that’ll help, plus one more who’ll join later.”

“Nine trolls is not a lot,” Equius said, studying the projection. “But even then it may be too many to sustain indefinitely. It would behoove the plan’s success to go with less.”

“Yes,” Karkat agreed, unmoved. “But easy doesn’t equal right. I chose these nine because I thought they were the best possible trolls to work with.” He knew that in a lot of ways, this insane plan was beyond hiveshit and a lot of Fleet trolls were kept in line only by threat of death and hemocaste bullshit. Removing those barriers in a lot of real ways skewed all of their social dynamics in ways that probably wouldn’t be obvious at first and fucked things up in very dangerous ways.

Karkat studied the highblood in front of him, the only troll of his chosen group that he didn’t know and didn’t trust. Equius stared back, shifty and uncertain.

Maybe it was too soon to push the issue so Karkat backed down slightly. “You’re free do as you fucking want, I guess. I can’t force you to agree with me or help us. You have to make up your mind about that on your own.”

Equius jutted his chin forward, stubborn as a musclebeast. “And if I chose not to?”

“I’ll let you go,” Karkat said plainly. “You walk out of here, do whatever it was you were doing before you knew about all this ludicrous shit, and then two perigees before Ascension Day Sollux burns your ass like its personal and you get dronestriked from orbit for sending the Empress a picture of musclebeasts fucking.”

The sheer ridiculousness made the situation sound nearly funny even with as life or death as things were. When did shit go sideways enough that unwarranted bulgepics sent to ruling figures were viable options? The shell of the starship behind him put things in an odd perspective. Maybe nothing was impossible or improbable when aiming for the stars.

“And if life continued the way it would have if I hadn’t interfered,” Nepeta interjected helpfully. “You would have gotten snapped up by the Fleet, broken into tiny bits, and then tossed out after getting backstabbed by some other highblood who decided they didn’t like you existing near them.” She took his big hands in hers, the claws gentle. “Equius… you would not survive the Empire, not as the troll you are now. They would have you culled or unmake you into something they could use, make you into a troll I wouldn’t recognize.” Her voice hardened, creaky. “I know that if you managed to survive your first sweep with them, it would not be as the troll I pitied.”

The scene was bleeding diamonds loud enough that Karkat had to look respectfully away. This wasn’t his business to either view or know, especially when Equius, the great blueblooded brute, chirped the smallest of helpless pale noises at Nepeta that made Karkat’s ears burn.

He turned away. “Come find us up in the hive later. I’m sure Sollux has a thousand questions for you.” Moderately confident that Nepeta had this under control, he all but fled back up the tunnel to safety, still fighting a traitorous blush. He’d seen professional butcherbidders eviscerate carcasses with less brutal efficiency than Nepeta breaking Equius down to the raw core. It was terrifying in an envious sort of way, the kind that made him wonder how Sollux might react if Karkat had the globes to express his paler urges, the equally disturbing thought of what rawness might lie at the psionic’s core.

The communal livingblock was crowded. Sollux and Eridan were bickering while a third troll observed them with a detached air from where she sharpened each tooth of the massive bladed chainsaw in her lap.

“Kanaya!?” Karkat paused, eyes wide. “When did you get here?”

“I arrived a short time ago,” she said, her slim fangs peeking from her lips as she studied where Sollux and Eridan were growing more and more animated in their argument. “Do they do this often?”

“Only over stupid shit,” Karkat said, grinning with relief. “It’s good to see you again. How was the sun?”

“Mild,” Kanaya answered, sharpening her strife specibus with a keen eye, scratching flecks of blood the color of rotten sand off the blades. “There were a few sunlit daywalkers lurking around that posed no issue for me. All in all the trip was quite enjoyable.”

“Fuck, that’s good to hear,” he said. “I’ve had enough of things going wrong for one night.”

She lifted one slim eyebrow. “Trouble?”

“Nepeta and Equius just got here too,” he admitted, picking at his clawbeds to give his hands something to fiddle with. “I think we’re better now, but things did not go as smoothly as I’d hoped.”

“Meaning the thick-headed moron tried to kill me,” Sollux laughed from the corner, eyes flickering. “Props to him for knowing who to go after first, no offense kk.”

Karkat sighed, getting irritated again now that he was done acting like he knew what he was doing. “Fuck off, you zap-happy cretin. I am not that fucking helpless in a fight.”

“Maybe not against, like, a normal troll,” Sollux allowed. “But against me? Shit, Karkat, its just not fucking fair.”

Eridan, the vicious little turncoat, agreed with him, chuckling to himself.

“Hey,” Karkat defended, pissy. “Isn’t it your knee I nearly broke, Eridan? How’s that limp treating you?”

Eridan stopped laughing and shrugged. “It’s healed now,” he said, sulky but prideful as he adjusted the rings on his fingers. “And you did lose that fight, remember?”

Karkat hissed at the both of them, exasperated.

Kanaya shook her head. “I think I am regretting my choices already. Is it too late to return to the daywalkers outside?”

They just laughed harder as Karkat’s face flushed uncomfortably scarlet.

23 Perigees Remaining until Ascension Day.

 

Terezi and Feferi arrived hand-in-hand, or rather, sword in fork. Nightbreak was a few hours ago but the season had turned enough that the horizon glowed with a rusty hue and the pink and green moons hung brilliantly in the sky, even true night a tad too bright for comfort. Soon the bi-lunar light season would steal the dark away entirely, turn dusk into burning noon so that for three straight perigees the only things that could safely move outside the security of a hive were daywalkers and sun-mad rouge lusii.

The two trolls announced their presence outside the hive with thunderous racket, rattling the heavily fortified door.

“Karkat!” Terezi yelled. “Let us in! Now, please, before we get covered in more viscera to track inside and make a mess!”

Eridan beat him to the door, hauling back the locks to throw it open. Feferi jolted inside, luckily not dripping foul sludge like Karkat halfway feared, Terezi a half-step behind her as Karkat heard a shrill screech sound from just out of sight, maddened and frenzious. Eridan slammed the thick door behind them and slid the bolts back in place with a click as the electromagnetic mechanism reengaged.

Terezi was grinning ear to fiendish ear, leaning on her dragoncane as she sniffed at the air. Feferi held her culling fork out before her, a different one from the golden monstrosity Karkat knew, something more serviceable for actual strifing, its tines smeared with dark gore that smelled rank as spoiled entrails.

“Shit,” Karkat cursed, stressing. “Let’s get that sterilized. Don’t captchalouge it until it’s clean.”

Feferi nodded, not too off put from her bloodied strife specibus. “They’re starting to gather and clump up. There’s not many lone ones lurching around anymore like small fry. They’re in shoals now.”

Karkat scowled as he filled a pot with scalding water, weed killer, and anti-fungus poisons. Feferi dipped the contaminated end of her culling fork into the mix to soak away the deadly toxins. “It’s fucking bullshit,” Karkat hissed, low and angry. “That’s one good thing about getting off this fucking rock—no more fucking daywalkers!”

“They’re not that troublesome,” Kanaya murmured as Terezi continued to investigate the block. A pounding came from the door, the faint hint of claws scrabbling at the steel.

Sollux appeared from deeper inside the hive, frowning, a bulky mask shoved up into his hair and knocked askew by his horns. “The fuck is this? Oh, hi Terezi.”

Terezi stashed her dragoncane back within her sylladex and grinned. “Greetings, appleberry wonder,” she said. “I’ve been waiting to finally meet you in the flesh.” She sniffed at him, tasting the air. “Been doing some wielding?”

Sollux shrugged and captchaloged the bulky mask off his sweaty head. “Trying to learn, actually,” he said. “I’m getting the hang of it.”

The trolls mixed together, talking, exchanging greetings and snarky jokes that weren’t the least bit aggressive, until even Equius even grew bold enough to creep slowly closer at Nepeta’s urging, and as Karkat stood there, breathing in the dying fumes from the anti-daywalker pot smoking numb contaminants into the air, he realized that for the first time, all of his chosen trolls were together in the same place, under one roof. Minus Tavros, but that was expected. All eight of them, together at last, free of bloodshed.

Karkat very carefully didn’t pay Terezi any extra mind, even if the sight of her sent a painful fluttery feeling down his posturepole.

Gamzee never managed to sway Karkat into believing in miracles with all his talk of clownery and mirthful whimsy, but right here, right now, watching his chosen tiny group mingle for the first time, it was damn close to a miracle.

20 Perigees Remaining until Ascension Day

With Equius schoolfeeding five more pairs of hands on how to build machinery and Sollux finagling the finer details of the project, the starship was at long last starting to resemble an actual flying craft and not a shore-wrecked ruin left to erode in the saltscum. The heat shield took shape, the solarscaling of the wedge-shaped body shimmering and glossy. The foredeck was raised, it’s tinted windows shielded against radiation, the forgeglass repurposed from the RO itself since such things couldn’t be found on-planet. The bow was taking shape, different from the culling fork front that flared proudly out the face of Fleetships.

This ship didn’t have that characteristic three-pronged bow. In truth it didn’t match in looks any ship of the fleet. It was different in every aspect, without the threat-display of the Empress’ weapon. This ship had a distinct lack of visual threats. It’s face was plain and serviceable, meant for speed, different from the Empire’s bristling, thorny starcraft, ships meant for war.

Sollux bit at his lip as he jiggled files into place on a holoscreen, surveying the results. Now that Karkat could better judge the ship itself instead of lines on a screen, he was concerned.

“It looks different,” he said, unsure of how to voice his worries. He knew Fleetships from a million and one propaganda films, the glorified might of the Empire on full parade.

Sollux grunted. “It is different,” he said, sixing and resizing a virtual piece of equipment Karkat couldn’t name. “This isn’t a Fleetship, Karkat. I didn’t have their blueprint to follow, and even if I did I wouldn’t have obeyed it.” He spun he hologram around, fiddling with a piece on it’s bottom, his nimble fingers expertly shifting the program in the ways he wanted. “This is my ship, and it’s built for us, what we need, which isn’t what the Empire wants in their ships. I designed this in my way, for us. Of course it won’t match a Fleetship like some doughmold cutout. This? This ship is better.”

Karkat pulled a chair from his sylladex and took a seat beside the psionic, curios. He’d never really understood the intricacies of the ship plans when they’d been nothing but code on the page, but with the physical thing growing in front of him, he wanted to know more. “How’s it better?”

Sollux glanced around fugitively. Terezi was nearby, inspecting steel jointing with the pads of her sensitive fingers. Even with the ringing crash of Equius, Nepeta, and Eridan fixing solarscales together nearby, Karkat knew the thunderous noise wasn’t nearly enough to deafen Terezi’s ears to them.

“Upstairs,” Sollux murmered, his eyes jerking to the tunnel entrance.

Karkat followed him upwards. The hive itself was in the worst state of disrepair imaginable and not due to eight trolls crammed together inside it but because most of the hive had been stripped for parts. Bare wall studs held up the stripped ceiling. The carpet was rolled up in a corner so that Equius could get at the underfloor wiring that powered the hive. The outside walls, doors, and windows were the only things left untouched, the heavily reinforced armor defending against the daywalkers outside.

“Why the secrecy?” Karkat asked. It was a different concern from his first fear but just as valid.

Sollux shrugged, the motion oddly stiff, forced. “Its…” he trailed off, mumbling, then he straightened up. “Karkat,” he asked. “Do you know much about how Fleetships work? What makes them function?”

It only clicked together now, staring into his goldblooded moirail’s red and blue eyes. The realization was a stab wound, twisting, sick with immediate dread. “Holy shit,” he said, winded with shock. “How did we not think of that before?”

Sollux passed his hand over his tired face, scrubbing at his eyes. “It’s no secret that powerful psychics and psionics get Helmed,” he said, kicking the toes of his battered shoes against the scraped up floor. “But most trolls don’t ever realize what that actually means.”

It squatted between them like a chasm, deep enough he couldn’t feel for the bottom, its uncrossable distance an ice-cold wedge driven between every single thought of spacetravel Karkat dreamt of. With it came shame, the bone-curdling kind, the sheer, fatal ego of Karkat going to a doomed psionic and asking him to find a way to make it to the stars without ever once realizing what that fucking meant.

“I don’t blame you,” Sollux said like he’d read the self-destruction happening in Karkat’s mind off his face, which was probably likely since Karkat’s traitorous face was rebellious enough to show everything he thought. “It’s not a thing most trolls think of because the actual reality of the act is covered up. It’s a culling-level offense to talk about it, much less go into detail with.”

Sollux fell heavily into the lone chair at the dismal nourishmentplane. His claws picked at the wood grain. “It’s actively hidden from rust and goldbloods themselves. No one’s supposed to really know much, but we all do anyway, at least enough to hear the word Helming and know it’s nothing good.”
Sollux snorted miserably, not looking at him. “I only know because Aradia convinced me to get curious about it, since we’d both realistically get Helmed come Ascension Day, so… I hacked into protected Fleetside servers and snooped around the files and databases of Fleetships themselves for answers.”

Karkat’s eyebrows reached his hairline, the shock another blow. “You hacked the fucking Fleet?” It was treason beyond reason, an active strike at the Empire above anything Karkat thought the goldblood capable of when they’d been five sweeps old, the reckless action of a much younger and far less damaged Sollux.

Sollux just… shrugged again, like the helpless gesture was all he could do. “Mostly I wanted to know if I could get away with it, at least until I found what I was looking for.” He cut his yes at Karkat, hard and acerbic. “You know I’m fucked if I stay alive until Ascension Day. What do you know?”

Karkat gulped, his throat painfully tight. The shame only grew deeper, the weight of it crushed him down on a cellular level. “That Helming had to do with the Fleet, and that it involved culling psionics and psychics for their abilities.”

Sollux’s claws unmercifully tapped the tabletop, drumming. “Close,” he said. “But wrong. It doesn’t involve culling at all. It’s much worse than that.” Sollux decaptchalouged a second datapad and booted it up, plugging a grubbot into the side. He set it on the table without comment and pulled up a holograph composed of utter nonsensical lines of code, each one flashing past too fast for Karkat to keep track of. “I couldn’t figure it out at first. I couldn’t make it make sense. I kept finding records of engine thrust and power levels related to distance traveled within pilot’s logs regarding Helmsmen.” He dug his fingers into his temples, inhaling deeply before he began again. “Helmsmen… fly the ships.” He stopped, his voice cracking. “We are the power source. We’re their fucking engine. It’s not even culling—it’s worse, it’s so much fucking worse and—” Sollux snarled, rage and grief and helpless agony. “And space travel isn’t possible without it. Without us, the Helmsmen.” Sollux snatched his fingers down to the grubbot plugged into the datapad, claws digging into its fragile, bulbous body until it bled red and blue. Sparks flashed dangerously off his horns as the weight of burnt ozone filled the air.

Karkat didn’t try to calm him. Sollux deserved this rage, this grief, and Karkat shared it with him, equally enraged and sorrowful and guilty and complicit, because some small part of him knew, had suspected even without the details, had known the only thing waiting for psionics in the Fleet was death.

Karkat’s lips pulled back from his teeth, hissing with a low sound of utter fury. He wanted to break something, smash it to bits and claw fistfuls of wires out, let organs slop out to cool. Even stronger than the wrath was anguish, a twisted sort of betrayal, because Karkat knew mutants like him were cullbait, but lowbloods who made it to Ascension were supposed to be safe, mean to be hers in a way his blood never would be. Sollux should be valued for his ability, praised for the power the Empire took as owed, as owned.

“It’s all shit, isn’t it?” He asked, desperate. “There’s nothing good about the Empire for anyone, no matter the hemocaste, no matter the fucking color. It’s all fucked, everything.”

Sollux nodded sharply, but the rage was burning rapidly away, trickling out of him like the innards of the pierced grubbot, similar enough in theory that Karkat had to look away to avoid gagging.

“Which poses an interesting question,” Sollux said, his cold voice flat enough to make the dead jealous. “If space travel is only possible with Helmsmen, how the fuck are we going to fly a ship? Just powering the bastard for longer than three nights is theoretically impossible. We can’t bring fuel with us, we can’t magically make our own or get more without dying violently to the Fleet within the first fucking perigee. I can build all the fancy ships I want but it’s all worthless if we can’t power it.”

The massive scope of the failure boggled Karkat’s thinkpan. It was a block he couldn’t reason past, but he knew one thing for damn sure. He growled, menacing in a way that for the first time ever might have been true. “You’re not flying the fucking ship,” he said. “You’re not.” His claws squealed reams of wood from the furniture, and the violence was a tether grounding him against the unimaginable. Sollux was not allowed to die. That was what he could not abide. Out of all the bullshit of an entire intergalactic Empire, this was the thing he would not lose, could not lose.

Sollux snorted, thin and reedy. “Fuck no,” he scoffed, and the datapad vanished back into his sylladex. His hands were fists. “If we’re doing this, if we’re rebelling so completely that there’s future plans to fuck over the Empire and battle the Fleet, then we have to have rules about what kind of Empire we’ll be. We’ll abolish the hemospectrum, let trolls live and decide to find their own happiness outside of the bullshit standards the Empress demands of us. One of those is going to be No. More. Fucking. Helmsmen.” He growled with the promise of murder, heat scalding the air around him strongly enough that Karkat’s eyeballs were dry from the dull burn of it, like he’d been standing by a daylit window with too-thin tint between himself and the sun. “And I’ll kill anyone who thinks otherwise.”

Karkat nodded, swearing it. He’d promise anything to free his moirail from this agony, held back from comforting him by his own anger, the knowledge that rage was right and just and Sollux wouldn’t accept a calming touch from him even when he deserved it, and Karkat wasn’t going to try and force one on him now when they both deserved to feel this pain, feel it together, and let it strengthen them enough to move past it as one united front, in synch and with total understanding.

“Which means I have to invent a way into the stars how it’s never been done before, and do it in a way they can’t track or follow,” Sollux finished. “No area of the void will be safe from them if they grab us by the zeros and ones.” He snorted, blowing out air in a whistle. “Plus there’s the fact that all Alternian spacetech more sophisticated than a fucking toaster runs off of psionic energy, which means me simply being present will fuck everything up by default.” Here, a half-snarl, wordless and angry. “Strong psionics and psychics power the Fleet—they don’t exist within it and the Fleet can’t exist without it. Having an unhelmed troll like me aboard will doom everyone by proximity alone. It’s kill/kill.” Sollux bared his teeth at the fate that awaited him aboard the Fleet, at the fate that would have killed Aradia, both of them Helmed, the fate of trolls cursed with the kind of power his moirail hatched with, both harmful blessing and wretched curse. Goldbloods for ships proper, rustbloods for lighter craft. Both given over to the Empire as their due come Ascension Day.

Sollux continued, low and volatile. “The only way Alternians have made space our bitch has been on the broken backs of psionics. Space travel does not exist without Helmsmen. Any vessel flown by us will not be powered by any sort of Helmsmen because I will de-atomize any troll foolish enough to suggest such a thing to me. Any ship without a Helmsmen will not survive space even if it could outrun or out-hide the Fleet or even support basic life support capabilities on it’s own. It’s a non-starter.”

He turned to Karkat, eyes aglow. “You asked me to get us off the ground. Such a task is impossible from all observable angles by what our race knows right now.”

The instinctive panic was smothered down as Karkat caught the loophole. “But in the future?”

Sollux grinned. It was a slow, terrible grin, baring sinister snagglefangs. “It’s an answer to a question that’s never been asked before.”

Karkat’s answering grin was every bit as calculated. The Helming wasn’t why Sollux had insisted on this talk being private, it was the admittance that the future of the plan hung on an extant possibility. “So we figure it out.”

“We do better,” Sollux said, grimacing a swear. “I do better. I always thought it was lazy for the Fleet to rely so heavily on a non-renewable resource that’s finicky at best and explosively combatant at worst.” He looked off into the distance through the single remaining hole in the wall, its edges splintered, the gray drywall cracking through.

Karkat hissed in breath through his clenched teeth. “They’ve always been lazy with their cruelty,” he said. “Let’s use that to fuck them over.”

“Yeah,” Sollux said, raising his chin. Something gleamed in his eyes, the spark of challenge. “I have an idea,” he admitted, rushed. “It can’t be tested on-planet without obvious and catastrophic failure volatile enough it might blow a hole down to the planet’s core, but the math is sound. The theory itself holds in every projection I run, but real-world it can’t be tested yet.”

“What is it?” Karkat asked.

“It’s not the power that I found to be a problem,” Sollux told him. “I was able to create a self-contained engine capable of powering our ship indefinitely without the use of psionic energy or fuel at all fairly easily.” He looked strangely sheepish for a troll who just admitted to discovering unlimited energy and called it easy. “I got the idea from subjugglators. Fucking magnets.” He shook his head, incredulous. “And I’m capable enough to keep our power signature and on-board electrics undetectable from the Fleet. They won’t be able to hack us or sense us from afar. But,” Sollux warned, “The issue I found wasn’t about either issue on its own. It’s both of them, together in the long term. The implications of hiding and running forever are not sustainable in any way. I can get the ship off the ground. I can get us to the stars without suffocating or burning or freezing, but I can’t hide us forever, even with the sopor issue halfway solved by space piracy. We can’t live. So,” Sollux said, looking right at him for the first time since this conversation started. “For you, so we could follow your dreams of rebelling and saving trolls, Feferi’s dreams of overthrowing the Empire, I had to think of a way to defeat a Fleetship.”

Karkat’s bloodpusher was in his throat.

“And,” Sollux said slowly. “I think I figured it out.”

19 Perigees Remaining until Ascension Day.

 

CG: I FUCKING HATE BEING LOCKED INSIDE MY HIVE ALL GOGDAMN DAY DOING FUCKING /NOTHING/ AND STARING AT THE SAME SHITTY WALLS UNTIL MY HEAD MELTS INTO GOO AND I DECIDE THAT RABID HORDES OF DAYWALKERS ARE, IN FACT, VASTLY PREFERABLE TO REMAINING INDOORS WITH SOLLUX’S ORNERY ASS FOR ANOTHER FUCKING SECOND!
CG: I HATE THE FUCKING LIGHT SEASONS.

Part of Karkat felt bad for continuously lying through his fangs, but he justified it as for the troll’s own good.

AT: i’M SURE THAT EVEN WITH YOUR PALE WOOFBEAST PARTYPITY THINGS CAN’T BE THAT BAD
AT: rIGHT,
AT: i’M SURE HE CAN’T BE THAT IRRITATING ENOUGH TO MAKE THE UNDEAD SEEM PREFERABLE AS THE UNDEAD ARE, iN FACT, dAYWALKING ZOMBIES
CG: SPEAK FOR YOURSELF. SOLLUX FUCKING CAPTOR THINKS HE HUNG THE MOONS AND THE NIGHT WAITS FOR HIM TO FALL. IT’S SICKENING.
CG: BUT THAT’S THE SAME SHIT AS ALWAYS, ISN’T IT? MY LIFE IS INCREDIBLY BORING AND I DON’T FORSEE THAT CHANGING ANYTIME SOON.
CG: WHAT ABOUT YOU? HOW HAVE THINGS BEEN OUT WHERE YOU ARE? AREN’T THE LIGHT SEASONS ALMOST AS BRUTAL OUT WHERE YOU’RE AT WITH NO TREES AND ALL THAT?
AT: uH, i AM UNDER THE IMPRESSION THAT THE DEGREE OF DAYWALKERS IN MY AREA REMAIN AT NORMAL LEVELS EVEN WITH THE LACK OF UNDERGROWTH IN THE GRASSPLAINS, i’M NOWHERE NEAR AS RURAL AS THE SANDWASTES, dAYWALKER POPULATIONS ARE KEPT IN CHECK HERE BY DROVES OF SLASHHAPPY EXPECTANT CALVAREAPERS AND FLARP PLAYERS LOOKING TO GAIN XP,
CG: IS THERE ANYTHING TOO FUCKING HAZARDOUS OR DO FLARPERS TAKE PLEASURE IN VOLENTARILY THROWING THEMSELVES ASS-FIRST INTO UNNECESSARY DANGER? FLARP JUST SEEMS COUNTERINTUITIVE TO CONTINUED SURVIVAL.
AT: mANAGING THE LOCAL DAYWALKERS WAS ACTUALLY ONE OF MY FAVORITE FLARP ACTIVITIES, iT WAS SAFER THAN ENGAGING WITH OTHER PLAYERS AND ALLOWED ME TO GAIN LEVELS WITHOUT RISKY INTERACTIONS WITH ACTUAL FLARPERS
AT: i WAS QUITE GOOD AT IT, nOT FLARP, pER SAY, bUT REMOVING DAYWALKERS, i WAS SUITED TO THE KIND OF DISTANCE FIGHTING THAT’S REQUIRED FOR DEALING WITH THE UNDEAD
AT: iTS WEIRD, eVEN NOW I CAN HEAR THEM AT MY DOOR AND I USED TO BE ABLE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT BUT NOW ITS SAFER TO IGNORE THEM AND HOPE THEY DECIDE TO LEAVE ME ALONE, eVENTUALLY,
AT: tHE SOUND OF THEM SCRATCHING AROUND OUTSIDE MAKES TINKERBULL NERVOUS,
CG: SHIT, THAT SUCKS. IS YOUR HIVE SECURE?
AT: uH, mODERATELY SO, i’M MOSTLY CONFINED TO THE LOWER LEVEL SO I CAN’T EXACTLY TELL HOW LARGE THE HORDE HAS GROWN WHEN I CAN’T REACH MY LOOKOUT AT THE TOP OF MY HIVE.
CG: BUT YOU’VE GOT LIKE, FOOD RIGHT? YOU’RE NOT GOING TO STARVE ARE YOU?
CG: TAVROS?
CG: TAVROS FUCKING NITRAM, IF YOU’RE STRANDED OUT THERE IN THE FUCKING GRASSPLAINS SURROUNDED BY DAYWALKERS WITH NO SUPPLIES, I MAY BE TEMPTED TO KILL YOU MY OWN FUCKING SELF! WHAT THE FUCK, MAN? ARE YOU SERIOUS? YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS.
CG: TAVROS, ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTION.
AT: uH, wELL, yOU SEE—
AT: iT IS AN INERESTING STORY FULL OF INTREPID, dARING CHARCATERS WHO PERSUE THEIR DREAMS OF EXTENDED SURVIVAL IN THE FACE OF CERTAIN DESTRUCTION, sTARRED BY A TINY FAIRYBULL LUSUS AND A BRONZEBLOOD WITH A BROKEN POSTUREPOLE AND LEGS THAT DON’T WORK LIKE LEGS SHOULD,
AT: iT REALLY IS A NICE STORY, hOPEFULLY IT’LL EVEN HAVE A HAPPY ENDING,
CG: FUCK! YOU’RE SHITTING ME? YOU ARE JESTING TO CAUSE ME TO SOIL MY UNDERGARMENTS IN AN EMBARRASSING FLOOD AND IT’S THE FUNNIEST JOKE I’VE EVER HEARD YOU JAW OUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH, BECAUSE I KNOW THAT YOU’RE NOT ACTUALLY TELLING ME YOU’RE IN TROUBLE, ARE YOU?
CG: ARE YOU?!?!?
CG: ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTION OR SO HELP ME I WILL SHIT A MILE OF RAGE SNAKE AND STRANGLE YOU TO DEATH WITH IT.
AT: i FEEL LIKE I’D PREFER THAT OPTION, hONESTLY, fOR COMPLETELY PERSONAL REASONS THAT HAVE NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH THE ARMY OF ZOMBIES AT MY DOOR,
CG: IS, SHIT, IS IT A ‘I AM FUCKING STARVING’ OR AN ‘I AM WAITING FOR THE INEVITABLE MOMENT WHEN THEY BREAK THROUGH MY WINDOWS’ SITUATION?
AT: uH… FORMER, aT LEAST I THINK THE WINDOWS WILL HOLD, tHEY’VE NEVER BROKEN BEFORE AND STRUCTUALLY THE HIVE IS SOUND, tHE PARTS OF IT I CAN REACH AT LEAST.
AT: iT’S NOT THAT DIRE, i’M ON TIGHT RATIONS BUT I’M NOT IN CURRENT DANGER, i’M PARALYZED KARKAT, nOT STUPID, i KNOW HOW TO SURVIVE A LIGHT SEASON,
CG: THEN WHY, PRAY TEEL, AM I HYPERVENTILATING OVER THE IDEA OF YOU GNAWING ON BOOKLEATHER AND WALL PASTE FOR SUSTINANCE?
AT: iN MY DEFENSE ITS NOT EXACTLY EASY PROCURING SUPPLIES AS A CRIPPLED TROLL, hALF DON’T WANT TO SELL TO A CULLBAIT LIKE ME AND THE OTHER HALF WANT MY HEAD MOUNTED ON THEIR WALLS FOR FUN,`
CG: BLESSED SHITFUCK, MAN. YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME SOONER! I COULD HAVE /HELPED/ YOU.
AT: i FAIL TO GRASP HOW YOU THINK YOU COULD HELP. mY SITUATION IS NOT EVER GOING TO CHANGE.
CG: MAYBE ITS BECAUSE I HAVE FUCKING EXPERIENCE DEALING WITH PIECE OF SHIT HAWKERS AND STALLSELLERS WHO WON’T TRADE WITH, LET ME GUESS— LOWBLOODS, CULLBAITS, MORONS, EMENIES, MIDBLOODS, ANY TROLL WITH DYED HAIR, STRANGERS, EX FUCKING CETERA!
CG: I KNOW HOW TO HANDLE THE PANHANDLERS, TAVROS. YOU COULD HAVE COME TO US FOR HELP, DAMMIT.
AT: uH, uS?
CG: YES, US, YOU THICK-SKULLED IDIOT. HAVE THOSE MASSIVE HORNS OF YOURS IMPARED THE PROPER GROWTH OF YOUR THINKPAN? HAS THE IMPRESSIVE WEIGHT OF THAT RACK SQUASHED OUT YOUR MEESILY INTELLEGANCE?
CG: YOU HAVE FRIENDS, TAVROS. YOU DON’T HAVE TO SUFFER ALONE.
CG: I’M TRING TO FIX THINGS TO WHERE YOU DON’T HAVE TO SUFFER AT ALL.
AT: tHAT IS, uH, vERY UNEXPECTED AND I’M NOT SURE IF I BELIEVE YOU,
AT: nOT THAT I THINK YOU’RE LYING, pER SAY, jUST RATHER THAT YOU OVERESTIMATE THE DEGREE OF CARE YOUR FRIENDS EXIBIT TOWARDS ME IN PARTICULAR,
AT: i AM UNDER NO FALSE ASSUMPTIONS THAT I’M GOING TO MAKE IT PAST ASCENSION DAY, tHAT’S JUST HOW THINGS GO SOMETMES, nOT EVERY TROLL IS FIT TO JOIN THE FLEET,

Karkat had to bite back, swallow down the instinctive treason that came so easily now.

CG: YOU WERE THROWN OUT OF THE ASCENSION LINE BY NO FAULT OF YOUR OWN, TAVROS.
AT: i COULD ARGUE THAT BY FAILING TO SEE VRISKA AS THE BACKSTABBER SHE IS, tHAT I DO INFACT DESERVE WHAT HAPPENED TO ME, tHAT IS WHAT ALL OF THE EMPIRE CULLBAIT PROPAGANDA PACKETS SAY,
CG: YOU COULD ARGUE THAT, YES. BUT ARE YOU GOING TO?
AT: dOES THAT MATTER MUCH? i’M NOT GOING TO MAKE IT EITHER WAY.
CG: YES, IT FUCKING MATTERS! I WANT TO HEAR YOU SAY IT.
CG: SAY, ‘WHY YES, KARKAT. I UNDERSTAND I’M BEING AN OBSTINATE ASSHOLE AND THAT BY ROLING OVER TO ACCEPT MY FATE MAKES ME A SNIVELING COWARD.’ OR IF THAT’S A BIT TOO STRONGLY WORDED FOR YOU, SAY ‘ I UNDERSTAND THAT I DON’T DESERVE TO DIE’. SAY IT.
AT: sEE, uH, i FEEL LIKE YOUR INSISTENCE ON PUSHING THE SUBJECT WILL ONLY GET YOU HURT IN THE END, aND I DON’T WAT THAT EXACTLY, i DON’T WANT TO CAUSE ANYONE ANY DEGREE OF HURT OVER MY LIFE,
CG: WELL TOO FUCKING BAD!
CG: I’LL—JAIGDYIWLA;PXYFJ!!!!
CG: NO WAIT THAT’S UGLY I KNOW I CAN DO BETTER.
CG: GRGAATETETDATEITAGDFESSSS!!!!!!!!!!! THERE! YOU HAVE MADE ME UTILIZE THE ART OF THE KEYSMASH AS AN OUTLET FOR MY RAGE, TAVROS. ARE YOU FUCKING HAPPY NOW?
CG: NO, DON’T ANSWER THAT YOU GLASSASSED HALFWIT. JUST STAY ALIVE, OKAY? DON’T FUCKING DIE BEFORE ASCENSION DAY, DO YOU HEAR ME?
AT: i SHOULD REMAIN FAIRLY SAFE WITHIN MY HIVE, aT LEAST UNTIL THE BI-LUNAR LIGHT SEASON IS OVER, dANGER IS EVERYWHERE BUT I’M USED TO IT,
AT: i HAVE NO INTENTIONS OF DYING BEFORE MY TIME, tINKERBULL WOULDN’T UNDERSTAND IF I LEFT HIM EARLY,
CG: THANK FUCK FOR USELESS LUSII THEN. IF THAT SMALL FLYING GNAT IS WHAT GETS YOU TO ASENSION DAY, I’LL PROSTRATE MYSELF BEFORE HIM TO BEG FORGIVENESS FOR MY SINS LIKE SOME SUPPLICANT BEFORE THE FUCKING ALTER.
AT: tHATS VERY, uH, cLOWNISH OF A THING TO SAY, sHOULD I BE CONCERNED,
CG: I’M GOING TO RIP OUT MY TONGUE! I HATE CLOWNS!!!
AT: iTS OKAY, kARKAT, rEMEMBER, i USED TO THINK HIM A TAD FLUSHED FOR ME UNTIL HE, wELL…
AT: lET’S NOT TALK ABOUT HIM, oKAY, i CAN ONLY IMAGINE HOW MUCH WORSE THINGS WERE SINCE YOU WERE HIS MOIRAIL, i WAS ONLY EVER A SLIGHT FLUSH-CRUSH,
CG: HOLY SHIT, THAT’S RIGHT!! HOW MUCH DID YOU FIND OUT?
AT: fIND OUT? aBOUT WHAT? hIM FINDING HIS RELIGION IN THE SLAUGHTERED BLEEDS OF HIS FELLOW TROLLS?
CG: NEVERMIND. JUST SWEAR YOU WON’T TALK TO HIM IF HE REACHES OUT TO YOU. TRUST ME, IT WON’T BE TO MAKE FRIENDS AGAIN.
AT: i THINK I FIGURED THAT PART OUT FOR MYSELF WHEN HE TOOK UP THE PAINT. tHE MIRTHFUL ONES DON’T TAKE KINDLY TO LOWBLOODS LIKE ME, mUCH LESS CULLBAITS.
CG: I’M SORRY, TAVROS. YOUR LIFE HAS NEVER BEEN AN EASY ONE.
AT: iTS…
AT: cAN I ASK SOMETHING?
CG: WHAT?
AT: tHESE TALKS, yOU TROLLING ME OVER THESE MOSTLY NONSENSE NIGHT TO NIGHT ANTICS… dON’T STOP. pLEASE.
CG: NEVER, LOSER. YOU’LL NOT GET RID OF ME THAT EASILY. I PLAN TO BE A PAIN IN YOUR AURAL SPONGES FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.
AT: sHORT THAT IT WILL BE.
CG: HA! I’LL JUST HAVE TO MAKE IT COUNT THEN.

Karkat kept jamming with Tavros, the chat devolving into shitty slam poetry and bad puns. He kept the conversation going as he wandered back down the tunnel to the ship cave.

From the outside, the starcraft was nearly complete. The guts of the ship were strewn about the cave floor in chunks of wires but a majority of the ship’s systems were in place. Sollux himself floated upside-down near the base of the ship, suturing microconnectors into place with his fingertips.

“Sollux!” Karkat crowed up at him. “Change of plans!”

Sollux spared him an annoyed glance before ignoring him completely. Typical.

Karkat barged over to where Eridan was marking off lists of inventory with Terezi. “You!” He snapped, pointing at the seadweller. “I need you to kidnap someone for me. Sooner rather than later.”

Terezi clacked her fangs at him like she could bite answers out of the air itself if she caught it between her teeth just right. “Who?”

“Tavros Nitram,” Karkat deadpanned. Terezi’s eyebrows hit her hairline but Eridan didn’t look like he recognized the name. “He’s the last member of our team and he can’t make it here on his own. Can you do it?”

Eridan shrugged. “Why can’t he make it here? He miss the season or somefin?”

Karkat growled, grumbly. “He’s disabled. Can’t walk. He’ll need help getting here of the kidnapping kind. Can you do it or not?”

Eridan shrugged again, but with dismissal this time. “Why should I? We don’t exactly need some sense-restricted troll like—” The highblood slammed his teeth shut with a snap as Terezi whirled on him, the blade of her unsheathed dragoncane at his throat.

Feferi was there in an instant, bristling and defensive, but Karkat threw out his arm to stop her. “Wait,” he said, watching them closely.

Terezi hadn’t harmed him, merely kissed the blade at his neck. “What was that?” She asked, calm and cold. “About disabled trolls?” Her blinded eyes stared him down, challenge and threat.

Eridan squirmed, and when he went to throw her off she let him. He rubbed at the welt on his neck rising an ugly purple, eyeing the tealblood with narrowed eyes.

Karkat stepped forward, letting Feferi pass him to hover near her moirail. “Listen up,” he called out, raising his voice. “I chose everyone on this team for a reason, Tavros included. We’re not leaving him behind, and we will not make his life miserable simply because he can’t walk, am I understood?”

Eridan scowled, nearly growling, but Feferi jabbed him in the ribs hard enough to steal his breath and he sputtered, seething even as he softened. “Fine,” he broke. “I’ll fetch him for you. I’ll fetch every last troll you send me after, you soft-hearted fool.”

Karkat stood his ground. “He’s the last one.”

Eridan huffed and turned away. “If we could fit more, you’d have us chase down every cullbait here to the fuckin’ sea.”

Karkat bared teeth at the seadweller, an outrageous breech of hemocaste he’d stopped caring about sweeps ago. “Absolutely.”

...

 

The last bi-lunar light season before Asension Day ended without fanfare, the radioactive sun dipping below the horizon for the first time in perigees to bless the night with cool darkness. There were still daywalkers out but with the short evening dark it was safe to deal with them once more.

Eridan went after Tavros, harking and hacking all the while, complaining loudly to any troll in earshot of the ‘disgrace of my fuckin’ station’. Karkat growled at him all the way out the door.

“Don’t get your ass eaten by the undead!” He shrieked after the retreating highblood, who flicked him off over his shoulder with a scowl.

Karkat waited two more nights before trolling Tavros.

CG: I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT WHILE I AM SORRY FOR WHAT’S ABOUT TO HAPPEN, I WIL NOT BE APOLOGIZING FOR ANY OF IT.
CG: YOU CAN THANK ME LATER.
AT: uH… WHAT?

Karkat sighed and blocked the bronzeblood, tenting his fingers under his chin as Sollux came up behind him.

“Are we on schedule?” Karkat asked tiredly as Sollux quickly scanned the open Trollian window on his husktop, the bronze text, the blocked message.

“Yes,” Sollux said simply. “We… we’re really going to do this, aren’t we?”

A tight band of pain cinched tight around Karkat’s heart at the proximity, the careful distance between them even now. There was nearly always some kind of heat frying inside the psionic, the burn of power and sparking energy, but for once the goldblood felt settled at his side, as calm as a pool hidden from the breeze.

“How does that make you feel?” Sollux asked, and the words were an offered hand in a way that Sollux couldn’t manage with his actual hands.

“I’ve run out of adjectives for excruciating,” Karkat deadpanned. “Unbearable’s lost its touch too.”

Before the light season, Sollux would have drawn back with uncertainty or quipped back with cold detachment. But Sollux’s ever-shifting mood wasn’t the only thing that had stabilized. Somehow, between the hive full of other trolls, the killer deadline hovering over their heads, and the threat of total annihilation, their moiraillegiance had settled into something as familiar and expected. It wasn’t easy, it mostly wasn’t even enjoyable, but there was a certain safety in knowing what to expect and figuring out how to work within the narrow boundaries of what each of them could conceivably offer.

It wasn’t some serendipitous fairytale diamonds like out of one of his pale romcoms, but that’s what made it real. Karkat wasn’t some soft-eyed midblood waiting for his highblooded knight to sweep in and save him, and Sollux certainly wasn’t some violetblood officer with a secret soft spot for the struggles of lower castes.

They were both squarely fucked up, so maybe this mutual fucked-up-ness was the best they could hope for.

Sollux said, tentatively, “You can rest, you know. Not everything has to be on your shoulders.”

Karkat huffed. “Are you telling me my own words?”

“Someone has to,” Sollux retorted, snorting back a sneeze that sent sparks popping off his twin horns.

The sight made Karkat grin. “Fine,” he relented, tucking his husktop into his sylladex. “I’ll rest until Tavros gets here. Nothing too important should blow up before then.”

“If it doesn’t,” Sollux offered, and the gentle grip of psionics boosted Karkat out the doorway. “I’ll handle it.”

“Hey,” Karkat protested, irritable even with a small part of him rejoicing for even this pale gesture. “Don’t fucking manhandle me, you superpowered fangfiend.”

“Fangfiend?” Sollux grinned evily, snaggleteeth in full, almost playful display. The mental grip nudged at Karkat again, steering him into a respiteblock. “Is that what you’re calling me now?”

“I have better names,” Karkat said, betrayed by a yawn as the sopor inside the recooperacoons began to affect him.

“Like?” Sollux prompted.

Karkat grunted. “Nice try,” he said, stripping to his underclothes to let himself fall into the recooperacoon. The green slime went to work at once, soothing the ache in his muscles and erasing that pestering urge in his mind to always be in control and aware and on full alert. It was a mark of how far they’d come as moirails that Karkat would even let Sollux see him like this, boneless and vulnerable.

Sollux grinned and turned away to lock the door behind him, making sure Karkat saw him turn the lock, keeping him safe even when asleep.

Diamond, Karkat thought just before the sopor took him under.

15 Perigees Remaining until Ascension Day.

“First of all,” Eridan said, dragging a hovercart behind him at the end of a chain. “Fuck you, your plan, this rebellion, you again, specifically, and all lowbloods in general.”

Muffled screams came from beneath a tarp thrown over the hovercart, a lumpy shape below squirming ineffectively.

“The fuck?!” Karkat spat, enraged at the sight. “You didn’t think to tell him what was going on?” he jumped forward, ripping up the tightly bound tarp to reveal a struggling Tavros, flat on his back and likewise bound at the wrists. A gag was in his mouth, something muzzle-like and made of iron.

“Shore I did,” Eridan growled, pissed, finned ears flaring. “But that didn’t somehow magically make getting him here any fucking easier, now, did it?”

Tavros was flashing the yellows of his eyes like a scared burdenbeast, his chest heaving. “Stop,” Karkat ordered, trying to work his claws under the binding at his wrists. “Don’t wiggle, I’m trying to help.”

Tavros went limp, eyes wide, and Karkat worked with the opportunity to get this shit off him even as he knew the bronzeblood had seized up at the sight of Karkat’s eyes. Ascension was only perigees away. His eyes were fully scarlet now, a bright, toxic red that could never be bluffed as rust.

Karkat snapped the cord at his wrists and went to work on the gag, scowling when he saw a keyhole. “Eridan,” he snapped, nearly hissing, overcome with rage at the sight of his friend bound and gagged and scared.

Eridan handed over the key with a shrug. “I had to make it look real,” he explained. “Otherwise trolls would’ve asked questions as to why I was hauling a non-ambulatory troll around.”

Nepeta jumped to their defense. “That doesn’t mean he had to keep them on full-time!”

Karkat unlocked the muzzle and Tavros spit out the steel bit with a frown, fearful.

“Hey,” Karkat said, backing off, hainds upraised and harmless. “Tavros? It’s okay, you’re safe. It’s me, Karkat.”

Tavros hauled himself into an upright position, his back to the rim of the hovercart, head lowered so those massive horns were set to gore if attacked. Even permanently downed, Karkat doubted Tavros would ever be an easy target.

The bronzeblood huffed, winded. “And the, uh, seadweller?”

“Is Eridan,” Karkat confessed, irritated. “And his treatment of you was not my idea.”

Tavros blinked, his eyes calculating as he looked between Eridan, who stood with his hands crammed in his pockets, Nepeta, nearly vibrating with excitement, and Karkat, red eyes bared and impossible and treasonous. “And the kidnapping part?”

A pause. “Okay, yeah, that one was my idea,” Karkat admitted. “How much did he tell you?”

“Not a lot that I believed,” Tavros said, wide-eyed. “But I am beginning to reconsider some things.”

“Like the plot to get off planet?” Karkat asked, chin raised.

Tavros flinched at the words, head ducking down lower. But no drones appeared in the sky, no battledroid leapt out to kill them, the face of an Empire Fleetship didn’t crest the skies above, nothing but a gentle breeze that rattled through the dry grass.

“It’s okay,” Karkat said again. “The Empire isn’t watching us here. They don’t know and can’t see.”

Tavros looked only more confused. “You’re…uh,” he trailed off, looking away.

“A mutant?” Karkat said gently. He settled down on his haunches in the grass. “Yeah. And we’re not the only two cullbait trolls here either.”

Not even Eridan argued that, respectfully lowering the hovercart so it rested on the ground, parking it.

“You’re serious,” Tavros decided. “You are actually serious about what Eridan said.”

“Serious as shit,” Karkat said, nodding. “We have a ship too. Can’t get more serious than that.”

Tavros’ eyebrows raised. “A ship?” He asked weakly.

“Wanna see?” Karkat offered. “There’s a few trolls who I know can’t wait to meet you as well.”

That quieted the bronzeblood’s heavy breathing, drained away some of the fear. He decaptchalouged a wheeled chair onto the dirt beside him and expertly heaved himself over the rim of the hovercart and into it. “Okay,” he committed. “Lead the way.”

12 Perigees Remaining until Ascension Day.

 

“You know,” Sollux told him. “We don’t have to wait until Ascension Day’s breathing down our fucking necks to go. It’d be far safer for us to leave sooner, before Fleetships start getting into range.”

“I know,” Karkat answered, stressing over files and files of data and stock and inventory that Terezi had already signed off on but he couldn’t help but go over himself.

“It would be smarter and better if we leave as soon as possible, “Sollux said slowly, gauging him.

“Can we do that?” Karkat stressed. “Are we ready?” He sat surrounded by mountains of paperwork, virtual files and datasheets and podloads of information. There was no way to get through with all of it.

Sollux shuffled his feet, then met his eyes and nodded. “Yes.”

“You think we’re ready?” Karkat asked, sick with nerves at the thought.

Sollux lifted his chin, obstinate. “Karkat, we’ve been ready for over two perigees. In a lot of ways we were simply waiting for the light season to end so we could fetch Tavros. Shit, Karkat, I’ve even had the time to paint the interiors of the bitch. She’s fucking named, now.”

“Named?” Karkat questioned.

Sollux shrugged. “CC, the CultistsCrowned, styled after the Empress’ own dread flagship, the CullersCruelties. Feferi’s idea.”

“That’s… not a bad name,” Karkat admitted. “Especially once we start the next stage of the plan.”

“Which can only happen if we get off the ground,” Sollux stated plainly. “Karkat, please. We’re ready.”

Karkat wanted to argue, to snap, to say, nothing has ever gone my way before, why should it start now, but if Sollux told him, if his moirail meant it, Karkat wouldn’t argue.

“When can we launch?” He asked, rubbing small circles into his temples. After nearly a full sweep, it was almost time. It was too long to wait and not enough time. Karkat would always be a mess of contradictions.

“Give me four nights to prepare,” Sollux asked, smugly prideful. “I can do it. All simulations have been favorable. I know I can fly the ship. I know the ship can keep us alive. There’s nothing to gain from waiting any longer.” Light popped in his eyes, the color bright and volatile.

Karkat bit his lip. “Four nights,” he offered. “Four.”

Sollux grinned evilly. “I can do it in three.”

“Bastard!” Karkat exploded, but there was teasing there below his instant hatred of the collapsing timeline.

And below that, under the sound of Sollux’s cackling, was the sound of relief.

10 Perigees Remaining until Ascension Day
One hour Remaining until Inaugural Launch.

CultistsCrowned was a magnificent ship to behold. The sleek ship had lost it’s crude wedge-shape, replaced with glossy lines and slim trimming, black as a night with no stars aside from stunning fuchsia linework, a callout to every ship in the Fleet like the flagship’s name wasn’t insult enough.

Sollux outdid himself. The starcraft was huge, a true flagship for their fledgling rebellion, dwarfing the hive above.

Karkat walked around the exterior of the ship one last time, taking in the solar scaling and heat shields, the ports for ion rays Sollux swore would work even though the tech has never been tested before.

He ran his clawtips across the smooth surface and the floor rocked under him at the thought that soon, this ship would be his hive and he’d never step foot on his home planet again. This ship would either breech the stars and thrive there or else succumb to failure and be a grave for himself, his moirail, their crew of trolls turned friends, and their insane plan of a better way of life.

Karkat took his hand away from the ship like it’d burned him. Sollux watched him.

“Nothing like this has ever been done before,” Sollux stated. “Most of this tech is homebrew. Alternia hasn’t felt the need to design anything new in a hundred sweeps. They’ll never imagine us capable of anything like this.”

Karat nearly wanted to cry, because of course his fucking moirail would still be concerned about the technology involved and not the dirt under his feet. “Maybe that’s why we’ll win,” he said. “That same lack of believe will be what drives us. It’s the shield we work behind.”

Sollux dipped his head. “Feferi’s been planning all sorts of things about what to do once we get up there,” he said, staring up at the ship he’d designed from the bottom up. “You should hear what she has to say. It’s really… something else. Something fucking wild.”

“Like building a ship and fleeing the planet kind of wild?”

“Exactly.”

They shared a nervous grin, but Karkat’s anxiety about everything else didn’t clash with Sollux’s dread of a mechanical failure, each of them safeguarding a different portion of their future.

A shrill alarm sounded, ringing in the lavatube. Sollux checked his palmhusk. “That’s Feferi,” he said. “It’s time.”

“Are you ready?” Karkat asked. “For… all of this?”

“Fuck yes,” Sollux all but crowed, eyes aglow. “I have been waiting for this night since the first evening you pestered me about a plan to revolt against the Empire.” He cracked his thin knuckles threateningly. “They’ll never know what fucking hit them.”

The words were a mirror of his own, because part of Karkat wanted this challenge. He wanted the strife. He wanted to go rounds with the Empire and see who came out standing, them or the Fleet, payback for his entire lifetime’s worth of suffering drawn out the veins of each troll they’ll save in this fool’s crusade.

Karkat boarded the ship. The door snicked shut behind them, firmly sealing itself. The air inside was cool and crisp against his fevered face, sweating already. He went up to the commandblock, the raised dais of the foredeck revealing a great expanse of the boring cave wall through the tinted window. Across the floor were the rows and rows of monitors and chairs for the control of the ship itself, complete with a commandpost and pilot’s rig. Sollux drifted over the controls but everything was satisfactory. He took his seat at the pilot’s rig.

Karkat sat at the table itself, ringed with nine chairs. Each one but two were filled with his closest friends, trolls he trusted and would die for. Kanaya, a jadeblood outside the brooding caverns and ripe for blood over it. Terezi, a blind lawyer who’s sense of justice existed outside the Empire’s laws. Nepeta, a true shipper who held them all together. Eridan, a vicious brute loyal to the Heiress above all reason. Tavros, who never did anything to deserve what suffering Alternia gave him. Equius, a headfast troll with a thnkpan for making what Sollux saw on a screen possible in real life. Feferi, the Heiress who would raise herself up an Empire to rival that of the Fleet. Sollux, who sat at his post with a smug, ironic grin, a pilot in his own way, born to make the Empire regret it’s entire existence. And Karkat, the mutant troll who dreamed it was all possible.

“Let’s fucking go,” Karkat ordered, and Feferi followed the commands that Sollux read out to the end, the ship humming quietly as it powered up around them.

For all of a sweep’s worth of waiting, with the launch here things moved all at once in a sickening rush of activity with no time for Karkat to ground himself. The countdown began, everything happening at once.

Equius kept a keen eye on the readings, tracking power to the ship’s systems. “Levels holding stable,” he said. “Preparing for launch.”

Nepeta curled her tail from her own seat, manning the guns with a manic smile. “Firing in three, two—ONE!” The ion rays rotated upwards as one and began blasting.

The noise should have been thunderous, but inside the ship it was felt more than heard as massive boulders were reduced to char above them and the ship began to rise.

“Shields efficient at blocking exterior damage,” Equius called out. “Still holding at 100%.”

Nepeta continued to fire the barrage upwards as the ship slowly gained ground. Moonlight broke through as the hive above disintegrated. The location itself had been stripped beforehand. Anyone who came across the crater would think some Doomsday device went sour and leave it at that.

The CC broke free of the ground with ease, the hundred tons of rock nothing to her. The hive itself was matchsticks below them as the ship’s nose tilted smoothly skyward.

Karkat caught sight of his reflection in the dark glass of the table. He saw a troll with red eyes and nubby little horns. And as they rocketed towards the stars, all he could think about was how much he was going to change the fucking world.

Notes:

jhc, the feat of just getting these idiots off the ground took 50k. Let's see what other adventures await them as they continue to powercrawl at the Empress.

This is low-key the fic about my love of Sollux's character I've been waiting years to write and I'm LIVING FOR THIS

I want to say more but 50k is a lot to digest so instead i'll be over here frantically writing the next part

and yes, coding this beast nearly killed me

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 3 of Mystery Ate Icarus-verse