Note: Inspired by that one line from canon:
CG: I THINK ONE OF MY NEIGHBORS WAS JUST CULLED RECENTLY, MAYBE YOU COULD LIVE THERE.
This was originally going to be more background for my Operation Invasion series but then I realized it didn't have to be background for that specifically.
Had this floating around for a good three months or so? Might as well post.
When his life fell from his body at last
All the kindness of his soul long past
All the benevolence sapped and ripped apart
From every corner and reach of his kindred heart
His last breath drawn in a scream of anger
I looked upon him with tears in my eyes and thought,
Stranger.
~ Words of the Disciple
It's an arid night, the air hot and listless. The sky's open and clear, with but a few faint clouds obscuring the faint stars. Stepping from this hive, Karkat scans the neighborhood, ears pivoting, lungs inhaling, skin prickling with static all down the spine, eyes peeled wide.
There is not a soul on the prowl. It's too early for most trolls to be active, or even awake. Sunlight still taints the sky from beyond the horizon. Neither moon had risen. A dry breeze rustles the occasional tree, sifting through the dust and leaves and grass, setting them swirling in currents.
Karkat exhales. He closes the door behind him, locks it, and pockets the key.
Not being one of those borderline feral children that subsists solely on hand-slaughtered pray and lusus lactations, he does need to make the occasional trip to a supply depot and exchange his meager allowance for the bare essentials. Still, living off a rustblood's payouts wasn't easy, and those times when he needs to blow cash on hive maintenance equipment he'd be forced to go on hunting excursions with his lusus, usually to the nearby excuse of a forest, or sorry little trickle of a river. He never goes far, never explores for the sake of it, never tries to make contact with other trolls he senses. He always hurries quickly home.
This time, he is going out to the supply depot to purchase a new husktop. It was going to vacuum-suck a serious hole in his allowance (there are many fleshy tree-slugs in his dining future, blergh), but his old one had rolled over and croaked after one too many poorly-written viruses. It had been running on borrowed time for ages, and not even Sollux could do anything about the fact that the hardware had been shat out from the waste piping of a prehistoric reptilian monster.
The walk to the supply depot is not particularly long, by objective measure. Only about an hour at a brisk walking pace. When he finally arrives at the hulking, ugly building, Karkat pushes quickly inside and glances around. Locating the communication sector, he makes a beeline for the husktops.
The floor of the supply depot is scrubbed clean to a disconcerting shine, and the lights were just a little too dark for comfort. Karkat keeps his ears tuned to the air as he stalks up and down the aisles, shoes tapping softly against the floor. He encounters a couple young trolls giggling and wandering aimlessly together, both a couple sweeps younger than him and accompanied by soft-eyed lusi, and he moves past them without a second glance.
He picks out an inexpensive and utterly generic purple husktop from the shelf lineup and punches in his name and ID code, and the system drains his credits and punts a husktop off the shelf directly at his face. He barely catches it. God. Fucking stupid system, were they trying to break his shit before he could even get a chance to use it?
He hugs the husktop to his chest and storms out of the depot, heading home at a hurried jog. The scales of the device dig into his shirt and the guts of the thing purrs heavily, but he wasn't going to captchalogue this thing, no way, he wasn't going to risk being unable to extract it from his stupid encryption modus.
Karkat is just a block away from his hive when he slows to a quick walk. The pink moon had almost cleared the horizon at this point, and he spots one or two trolls out in their lawn rings. But it's fine, it's all going to be fine. He'd get back home without a hitch and –
"Heeey! Asshead!"
Fuck.
Karkat keeps going, training his eyes resolutely forward and ignoring the shout. The leering rustblood who had issued it trails after him, and then breaks into a run. He stops and turns and faces the girl down, every possible fang bared, eyes narrowed. She stops in her tracks and raises her eyebrows slightly.
"I'm only going to say this once, so pay the entirety of your microscopic attention to my words. FUCK. OFF."
"Cute," she says, and tips her head slightly, her own teeth bared. She must have a sweep on him at least, with a stature and physique like that. Easily a head and a half taller than he is, which is all kinds of fucking unfair. Her eyes are starting to fill in, even. Hell, she's probably getting shipped starside this coming half-sweep.
"Why're you carrying that, cutie?" she says, voice tonals dropping an octave and eyes hooding a little bit, black lips arching another micrometer over her white fangs, "your sylladex out of sorts or what?"
"None of your business," he snarls back, dropping his own voice to a growl.
They stare at each other, neither blinking.
"Aren't you that weirdo hermit kid with the imperial red flags draped on your hive?" she says finally. Her eyes flick to his shirt. "Why are you even hiding your color, you've obviously got the same shit blood as the rest of us around here." She lowers her head a little, angling her horns, and takes a step toward him.
"I said to FUCK OFF, YOU STUNNING SPECIMEN OF A SHITSUCKER!" he yells, hairs rising, spine prickling. There are others watching now. He and she both know it.
"I might do that, dear neighbor, if you hand over that nice piece of hardware."
He stares at her.
"Come on, it looks like a second-grade piece of shit anyway." She smiles. "I could use a backup, mine's due to die any day now, so you'd really be helping me out."
He's silent for a second.
"If you think I'm just going to pass my shit off to your grubby prehensile flesh-hooks then you're seriously MISTAKEN," he hisses, shifting his feet slightly, tuning his ears to the trolls watching from their lawn rings, front doors, windows. Flares his nostrils.
She barks out a laugh. "Ha! Well, too bad I was mistaken."
And she decaptchalogues a broadsword and charges him, the metal singing as it rends the air. He jumps back, missing the blade by such a close margin that it splits a neat cut through the sigil on his chest, and she spins it in her hand like it weighs nothing and goes in for a corkscrew skewer, which he barely sidesteps. An excited chitter is starting to build up around as onlookers begin to gather. First entertainment of the evening.
"Come on, cutie. Let's play some pin the hole in the blood-pusher."
His eyes narrow, pupils slitting, then widening. She takes another wide swing, and he ducks, charges in, clutches the husktop tightly to his chest, and pulls a sickle from his Strife deck. In one solid SCHLICK, he throws his whole weight into the tip of the blade and digs it between the slots of her ribcage. Her weight slams into his shoulder, her sword falls from her hand, and he steps behind her and hooks her around in a circle, slinging her heavy deadweight behind him, feet digging into the dirt to counterpoint until he twists his blade again and she goes flying off the hook. He nearly goes flying too, but he catches himself, stumbling just a little.
"BACK THE FUCK UP, THE LOT OF YOU SHIT-MONGERS!" he screeches, brandishing his dripping sickle at the trolls who've started to press in around them in a ring. "SO HELP ME I WILL END YOU AND LET YOUR SOULS GET GUZZLED BY THE FUCKING HORRORTERROS!"
He's trying to intimidate a hole between a tall brownblood with psychic-sparky eyes and another red when suddenly his foot gets tugged out from under him and he falls heavily to the ground with the husktop beneath him, crushing one arm against the pebbly earth. The heavily bleeding rustblood girl rolls over him and pins him down, grinding his face into the ground with so much force that his fangs go gritty with dirt, and he feels the sickle get wrenched from his hand and –
Everything goes quiet –
Everything goes slow –
He is so fucking pissed and terrified it's unbelievable. It blows his fucksforsaken mind. He's going to die here, get killed publically and pathetically over a shitty piece of machinery, he should've just handed it over when he had the chance but it's so fucking UNFAIR!
He howls and twists his body, furious fire lighting lightning through his pan and eyes and spine, and the girl at his back suddenly screams with pain and the weight is off him. He rolls over and whips around to see her thrown across the dirt and into a couple of onlookers, bright psychic sparks fizzing off her body. He bolts forward, snatching the sickle from her hand, smashing the sole of his shoe full down on her face, and splitting a lung with the force of his scream. The crowd parts. He rushes through, heading home.
He gets inside, throws the bolt, breathes heavy, heart pounding in his throat. It seems to take forever for him to calm down. Finally, he carries his dirty husktop up to his respite block and opens it. It won't boot. Of fucking course. Probably crushed to death under his weight. He tries not to think about the psychic that must have saved his ass for no discernable reason. Seriously, why would anybody do that?
An hour later he's in his nutrition block preparing roe cubes for his lusus when he hears a window smash somewhere in the house. Are you serious. Are you fucking serious?
He tiptoes to the living room, sickle in hand, and there, standing bandaged and snarling on his carpet, is the fucking rustblood girl. Her nose is bent and crusted with blood, her lips are torn, her hair is matted, and she's got white bandages tied tightly over the stab in her side.
"You half-pissed little runt," she seethes, dashing forward and whipping her sword at him with the exertion of her whole body. Somehow, despite her injuries, she's faster and deadlier now. She's not toying with him, she's here to kill him and loot his hive for his public shaming of her imbecilic ass. He can't dodge the swipe fast enough, and his shoulder splits open and wells with blood and searing pain. He freezes. She freezes too, halfway through a follow-up backhand. It's almost comical.
Oh god.
She's seen.
He grits his teeth.
Tightens his grip on the sickle.
The tip of her sword sinks a little in the air, like she's forgotten she was about to kill him, eyes going wide at the color seeping from his shoulder. And then their eyes meet, and she opens her mouth like she's about to ask him a goddamn inquiry about his fucking mutant blood, and he just shoves the whole curve of his blade up under her ribcage and straight through her heart. Her mouth and eyes widen, and she makes this soft little wriggler squeak of surprise.
He wrenches the blade free, fingers locked tight and slicked with blood. He staggers back on jellied legs. The sword drops from her hand and she lurches forward, grabbing his shoulder, stabbing it full of pain as her claws press into the gash, and he yelps and reels back, scrambling out of reach. Her fingers go limp and she sways on the spot, staring awestruck at the color on her hand.
He breathes heavily at her, his pupils blown wide and inky black.
Dark red blood drips down her front and out of her mouth, and she tears her gaze away from the almost incandescently bright blood on her hand to stare at him, like his face's got the answers to everything she ever wanted to know but was too afraid to ask. That lost look on her face, eyelids thrown back and lips slightly parted, nostrils flaring and ears tuned in his direction, eyebrows tilted like she's the sorriest thing in all the planets in all the galaxies, that look on her face is going to break him.
The last thing she does before she collapses facedown on his dusty carpet is close her eyes and slowly, carefully smear his blood on both eyelids. And then her body goes slack, falls wetly and weightily to the floor. It doesn't move another inch.
Karkat finds himself down on his hands and knees, dry heaving over a steadily growing puddle of velvet red. His eyes burn and sting and he sobs between heaves, throat sore and constricting like he's swallowed a hot stone.
Oh god,
Why.