Meteor City, for whatever reason, has long been the home of many a superhuman being. Be they heroes or villains, these people all find their way to the heart of the metropolis to search for their destinies and identities.
At the current date, said city is the abode of eleven powerful heroes, with strange faces and strange pasts. An astute observer may notice that these heroes' false faces bear strange similarities, but most chalk this up to coincidence. Meteor City also houses four supervillains and their legions of minions. Despite the presence of said 11 heroes, these villains have not attempted to leave the city. The reasoning behind this is unclear at the moment. Perhaps they are simply fans of the city's delicious and world-renowned secret-recipe chocolate fudge.
These beings are in constant conflict. Even the heroes disagree; their styles of defending the world differing greatly. Some heroes prefer peaceful action, simply binding criminals and leaving them for the police. Some are more…violent. But all of the heroes agree on one thing: they are not united, and they need to become so.
All four major villains would politely disagree.
BRRRRINNGGGGG!
Karkat groaned, mumbling cuss words and slamming his fist down on the incessantly wailing alarm clock by his bedside. The digital display stated the time to be 6:05 AM, which as far as Karkat was concerned was far too early for any sane human to be awake.
Moaning and groaning, he pulled himself out of the cocoon of bedsheets that he had wrapped around himself once again. One of his sleep socks was still on and the other was barely hanging, his toe shoved through a hole in the sock's ankle.
"You awake?" shouted his (probably hung-over) father from the room next door.
"Fuck you," Karkat groaned back. He stretched himself, his back cracking.
He prepared his own breakfast (Crunchy Crabs—the one and only crab-shaped marshmallow cereal!) and piled some new notebooks into his freshly bought backpack. He would be attending public school for the first time this year, as a freshman at the local high school. For whatever reason, his father hadn't allowed him to go until this year.
Karkat had always been curious about public school. He knew it was probably a stinking, festering hellhole of assholes and losers and losers who smelled like their assholes, but he was still curious. His father's idea of a good education mostly revolved around teaching Karkat how to effectively use a knife for stabbing, stabbing, occasionally woodcarving, and then more stabbing. Karkat knew at least eighty different ways to kill somebody with a knife, but he barely passed the mandatory standardized homeschool tests he took every year. If he wanted to be a serial killer, then he was perfectly set up.
Every summer without fail, Karkat asked his dad if he could go to public school that year. The answer was always no, despite the many reasons Karkat invented (I could learn so much, I want to make friends, I can get practice using the dummy knife on bullies!). The trouble was, though, Karkat had no idea why.
"I'll tell you when you're older," Karkat's dad would always say. "When you're older you'll understand." And now, finally, Karkat was fourteen and old enough—but he still didn't understand anything.
He slung his Batman backpack over his right shoulder and prepared to slouch out the door when his father ambled down the stairs.
Karkat's dad was a tall, slender, constantly hung-over drunk who always insisted that Karkat call him Jack. He had a scar over his eyebrow that he liked to claim was won in a battle with the legendary supervillain Number Eight, but Karkat was almost certain that the only real battles Jack had fought occurred over a bar table.
"Kan…Kit…Karkat," he mumbled, stumbling on the bottom stair and catching himself on the banister. "A word…"
"Sure, Dad."
"Oh, fuck that's a nasty headache…son. Be careful out there, and if somethin'…if somethin' weird happens, get home immediately." For a moment, Jack was entirely lucid, his eyes focused and fixed on Karkat's face.
"If something weird happens, I promise I won't delay in heading for home," Karkat promised, his hand resting on the doorknob.
"Swear on Vantas honor," Jack demanded. "Somethin' out of the ordinary, anythin' out of the ordinary, you come straight home to me and don't delay."
"I swear on the Vantas family honor," Karkat dutifully intoned. Jack slumped down, once again returning to the image of the hung-over drunk.
"Good…that's good…I'm gettin' some coffee…"
"Bye, Dad," Karkat replied, finally leaving the door and heading towards the blindingly bright sunrise. He had the strange feeling that today would be a very long day.
Karkat lived in a suburb of the main city, and all the houses looked nearly the same. His bus stop was a short way up the road near a stop sign, and he could see a few other students already waiting there.
"Check it out, who's the newb?" one of them called out when he caught sight of Karkat.
"Hey, it's that weirdo Vantas kid. You know, the one with the crazy serial killer dad who lives all alone in the house down the road?"
"What's he doin' up here?"
Karkat ignored them, reaching the stop sign and standing very still and determined. He was dying to let loose and cuss them into oblivion, but instead he exercised what little control he had and stayed quiet.
Fucking assholes could go suck his bulge, he was the most mature out of any of them.
"Whoa, check it out, that asshole's actually got red eyes!" Karkat's head snapped around, and he glared daggers at the kid who spoke.
"Oh, man, he does, that's freaky!"
"How much pot d'you bet his mom smoked?"
"All the pot. All of it." The jeering grew stronger and louder, and Karkat was seething. He bit his tongue in a nearly futile attempt to keep back the tide of rage.
"I bet he doesn't even have a mom! She was probably some whore who left his papa when she saw what a bizarre-looking freak she popped out of her gut. Plop! There goes the mutant!" That was it. That was fucking it.
"My mother was no whore," Karkat said softly.
"It speaks!" one of the boys shouted in mock terror. "What was that you said, mutant?"
"I said, my mother was not a fucking whore," Karkat repeated, looking the offending new student straight in the eye. His scarlet irises burned straight through the other boy's brown ones. "If you're curious whose was, though, I suggest you go take a look in the mirror. But then again, if you did, your eyes might melt from the sheer horror of it. Mere mortals were not meant to look upon such a monstrosity."
There was a chorus of oohs, and a crowd began to form. Why were there so many fucking people at this bus stop?
"Fight, fight, fight!" someone started chanting, and the rest of the mob joined in. Karkat just kept staring at the boy who spoke, letting his eyes do the rest of the work.
The boy turned tail and fled, stopping just past the crowd at the edge of the bus stop, and the group dispersed, muttering in disappointment. Karkat clenched his fist. Coward.
The school bus arrived: a hulking, yellow monstrosity full of more people than Karkat had ever seen in one place before. Karkat found himself last in line to board, and he walked down the aisle cautiously, searching for a seat. All of the available spots were immediately filled with backpacks.
"Hey, sit here!" someone said brightly from behind Karkat, and he turned to immediately be pulled down into a seat near the front of the bus.
The kid who had grabbed him grinned. He was a dorky-looking guy, with buck teeth and glasses, and he was wearing a fucking bowtie. In sum, he looked ridiculous.
"What the fuck are you supposed to be? A clown?" Karkat asked grumpily.
"My name's John Egbert! Nice to meet you!" John extended his arm to shake hands with Karkat, who stared at his hand as though it was diseased.
"Why are you shoving your appendage in my face?"
"Come on, shake hands! What's your name?" John was grinning, and Karkat reluctantly shook hands with him.
Splurt! A stream of water shot from John's bowtie, triggered by something in John's hand. Karkat was hit directly in the face, and he spluttered angrily.
"What the ever-loving fuck was that supposed to be, Egbert?" he demanded. John laughed.
"It's a water squirter! Nobody else falls for my tricks anymore, so I had to try this new one on you," John said brightly.
"Fuck you very much," Karkat grumbled, and he crossed his arms, scooting to the very edge of the seat. Most of his body was in the aisle, and his Batman backpack acted as a barrier between him and John, who looked very disappointed.
"Heeeeeeeey, John," someone drawled from the seat behind them as she draped herself over the back of the seat. "Who's the newbie?"
Karkat studied the visitor. She had suntanned skin and dirty blonde hair, and her eyes were partly hidden by large, round glasses. She was grinning an easy grin, and her chest was pressed against the seat, showing off ample cleavage that Karkat really did not need to see.
"Vriska, this is Karkat. Karkat, this is my girlfriend Vriska!" John declared. Karkat shrank down in his seat, adjusting the Batman backpack to hide John's face.
"Oooh, a newbie! You just move here, then?"
"I've lived in this neighborhood all my fucking life. I was homeschooled," Karkat grumbled, immediately disliking the blonde. Vriska grinned.
"What grade are you going into?" John asked.
"Ninth," Karkat grunted.
"Hey, sweet, we're the same year! What's your schedule?" John demanded excitedly, leaning over Karkat's backpack. His bowtie was still dripping water from a nearly-invisible nozzle.
"Fuck you," Karkat replied. John pouted.
"You're no fun," he said as he made puppy-dog eyes over Karkat's school things. Karkat tried to edge even further away from the prankster and fell off the seat into the aisle. Vriska laughed loudly before leaning even further over the seat and grabbing Karkat's backpack.
"Hey!" he shouted, scrambling up onto the seat in an attempt to snatch it back. Vriska unzipped it slowly, holding it out of Karkat's reach, before pulling out a printed piece of paper that bore Karkat's class assignments.
"First period: Physics 1 with Mr. Fenton." Karkat made a grab for the paper, but missed. "Second period: Honors Chorus with Ms. Naylor the Wailer—hey, you're taking a chorus class? Very manly," Vriska cackled, dangling the schedule above Karkat's head.
"Hey, come on! I needed a fucking fine arts class!" he protested loudly.
"Third period: English 1 with Mr. Hussie," Vriska continued over Karkat's protests. "And fourth period he's got Tech Ed with Dr. Captor," she finished, shoving Karkat's schedule paper back in his backpack. John checked his schedule.
"Cool, we've got three classes together! See you in Physics, Karkat!" John announced brightly. "And English, and Tech Ed…" Karkat groaned.
He seized his backpack out of Vriska's hands just as the bus came to a stop at the local public school, Sassacre High. The school was a squat brick building with a large row of doors at the front. It was peppered with bizarre-shaped windows.
Karkat held a yellow paper map of the school in his left hand as he pushed open a door with his right. It seemed that before he went to his first class, he would have to go to his 'homeroom' teacher, whose name was printed at the top of his schedule. His homeroom teacher happened to be a Mr. Andrew Hussie, the same teacher who would be in charge of Karkat's English class.
Homerooms were assigned at random to students within a certain grade; there was no logical alphabetical order whatsoever. Luckily for Karkat, neither John nor Vriska was in his homeroom class, but several of the jeering boys from earlier were.
Karkat slouched into an open seat between a large boy in gym shorts and a girl with red sunglasses who was licking a swirly lollipop larger than Karkat's head. The girl with the glasses turned to face Karkat and…and sniffed at him. What the fuck?
"Your shirt smells delicious," she declared, staring at Karkat's chosen Iron Man T-shirt.
"Fuck off," he replied grumpily. The girl with red glasses continued to look at (and sniff at) Karkat's shirt until he edged his seat away from her.
"Please, refrain from such lewd language," requested the boy in gym shorts, turning his head to look at Karkat. Karkat replied with his middle finger just as Mr. Hussie entered the room.
"Sup everyone," the teacher declared robotically. He was tall and thin, wearing a green t-shirt and cargo shorts. "Hope you had a cool summer, watched a few movies, et cetera." The class stared at Mr. Hussie. "Anyone find any wolf heads in their closets? No one? I did," he continued before realizing that nobody in the room actually gave a shit.
"Mmm, green apple," murmured the girl with the red glasses under her breath. Karkat rolled his eyes.
"So…lockers. Since the school says everyone has to use lockers this year, I'm handing out papers with locker numbers and then you guys can go to your lockers and put your shit away. When the bell rings, head to your first class and admire the horse paintings on your way out."
Karkat's locker was number 69, and he dutifully left the classroom, trying to avoid admiring the horse paintings on his way out. Some of them were more than a little bit alarming.
After emptying his backpack into the locker and keeping only some pencils and a notebook, Karkat returned to his homeroom, only to hear the bell ring for first period.
According to his map, physics was in a portable behind the school, so he followed the stream of students and tried not to get swept away until he reached the doors to leave the building. A crowd had gathered around the classroom door, and Karkat shoved past them impatiently, wondering what the fuck they were waiting for. The physics classroom door was cracked open, and he stepped in—
Splash! A full bucket of water crashed down on Karkat's head, drenching him. He clenched his fist and reached for the knife his father always made him carry, remembering all too late that he'd left it at home (apparently the school officials had a problem with weaponry?).
"John Egbert, I am going to kill you," he growled, knowing immediately whose prank this had been. John and Vriska were seated at two desks on the opposite end of the classroom, laughing raucously.
"Oh man, he fell for it, he actually fell for it," Vriska cried, grinning widely. The other students filed in around Karkat, trying not to step in the puddle of water. Karkat growled.
He slowly and deliberately removed the bucket from his head, placing it on a nearby shelf. He walked to a desk in the back of the classroom and sat down, leaving behind a trail of wet footprints and wringing water out of his messy dark hair.
A fart resounded around the classroom—John had sneakily placed a Whoopee Cushion on Karkat's chair. He grit his teeth.
Finally, the physics teacher entered the classroom.
Mr. Fenton was a tall, thin, reedy-looking man with a thatch of strawberry-blonde hair and a face that made him look like a high school student who'd been stretched on a rack. He was wearing a Star Wars shirt, and now that Karkat looked around he noticed that the entire classroom was covered in Star Wars and superhero paraphernalia. Mr. Fenton appeared to particularly favor real-life heroes, and there was a life-sized poster of Lady Luck hanging behind his desk next to a cardboard standup of the villain Prankster. Vriska had been posing sarcastically next to Prankster when Mr. Fenton walked in, and she now crept cautiously back to her seat, her dirty-blonde hair falling in her eyes.
"Good morning everybody, and may the Force be with you!" Mr. Fenton declared. Half the class groaned and the other half laughed. John tossed a paper airplane at the teacher, who caught it out of the air and redirected it to the trash can. "Welcome to Physics One, where we will dissect the universe one atom at a time. As a warm-up exercise, I want to discuss a topic that comes up all too frequently in modern physics circles—superhumans. How do superpowers and extraordinary abilities fit into our scientific image of the universe? And where do you think the heroes hide in their spare time?"
The class broke out into eager discussion. John was particularly engaged, shouting across several tables at another friend of his named Dave. Vriska, on the other hand, was oddly quiet. She leaned back in her chair, kicking her feet up on the table, and pulled out several sticks of bubble gum, which she immediately began to chew.
"Thup," someone lisped at Karkat. He turned to see a tall, skinny kid seated next to him. "They're idiotth, ignore them. I've been doing it for yearth."
"And who the fuck are you?"
"Tholluckth Captor at your thervithe. Who are you?"
"Karkat Vantas." Karkat took a good long look at Sollux. He was bony and about six feet tall, with a bent, slouching back and 3D glasses covering his eyes. He was wearing a superhero t-shirt too, but his advertised a real-life hero: Wisp, one of the big city's eleven main heroes.
"I thee you met John."
"You mean the dumb as fuck prankster who thought it'd be fucking funny to rig traps for me on my first-ever day of public school? Fuck yes, I met John."
"Yeah, he wath pretty awful to me too. It'th jutht hith perthonality, he wath bullied a lot in middle thchool tho now he thinkth it'th cool to meth with everyone elthe," Sollux explained. "It'th a terrible eckthcuthe, really. I don't know how Vrithka putth up with it, and she'th a bitch herthelf."
"So who the fuck are these people? I've been homeschooled, I don't know anyone."
"Okay. You already met John and Vrithka. The douche with the thunglatheth that John'th talking to ith Dave Thtrider, he thinkth he'th really cool. Necktht to Dave ith hith couthin Rothe. I don't know Rothe very well, but she'th one of the thchool'th lethbianth. She and her girlfriend are really weird. Over there near the fishtank ith Eridan, he'th an inthufferable prick." Sollux continued to go around the room, naming the students and providing his (mostly derogatory) opinions of them. He only seemed to like two people in the room: a quiet girl called Aradia who was standing in the corner, and another girl, Feferi, who was arguing with Eridan in a corner.
The class never did seem to actually come to order, instead becoming more and more raucous and disobedient. Mr. Fenton had been distracted by the entrance of another teacher whom he was friends with, and John now reigned supreme over the classroom. He was currently rigging Mr. Fenton's laptop to spray him with confetti when he next opened it.
The bell rang at the end of first period, and Karkat gathered up his notebook. He and Sollux had spent the class debating Lady Luck's spider-related powers and how they fit in with her main motif, and they'd lost track of time.
As Karkat was crossing the grass to return to the main building, the sun seemed to disappear out of the sky. Darkness fell suddenly and rapidly, like somebody had simply turned off the sun, and thick, oily clouds filled the air, moving at incredible speeds.
"Holy shit," Karkat murmured, clutching his notebook tightly. "Holy fucking shit."
He looked around for Sollux, but the bespectacled teen was nowhere to be found. The only remaining people were running for cover in the main building, but Karkat found himself rooted to the ground, transfixed by the oily blackness in the sky. He couldn't have run if he wanted to.
He watched, hypnotized, as a slim figure descended from the air in a halo of pitch-black thorns. She smiled.
Holy motherfucking grub-eating shit. Karkat knew who that was, he had seen her face on the front of newspapers: Midnight Star, one of the most powerful real-world villains in the history of the earth.
Karkat took a stumbling step backwards, but black, thorny tentacles rose from the ground to wrap around his ankles, wet and slimy and stronger than steel. His father's words that morning rang in his ears: Somethin' out of the ordinary happens, anythin' out of the ordinary, you come straight back home.
Had his father known that Star was coming?
A/N: Hey! So this is the beginning of my new story, because I'm physically incapable of actually focusing on only one thing at one time! Actually, this is sort of more like a teaser for the story, since I'd like to get some more finished and pre-written before actually publishing it. The only reason I've posted this right now is because I have no freaking clue how long this story is going to be and if it's going to take me till next year to finish it, I'm gonna need some inspiration. Please, please, please leave a review if you like the concept or have advice, because God knows I need it.
I decided to write this fic to challenge my skills in working with other people's characters. The rules I gave myself were these ones: One, I have to write all of the trolls as heroes and all of the kids as villains, no matter what their personalities canonically are. Two, I have to still keep the characters true to their canon selves-I'm not allowed to make them too far out of character. Constructive criticism as to how I can do the latter in a better manner would be awesome, especially when I get around to posting later chapters.
That's all! Bye! XD