A/N: Holiday break, people. Or, as I call it in my head, 8r8k 8y 8ig Spider.
Anyway. This is... Well. This is a crackfic. I know. I'm never fun anymore, right? I prefer donating whatever ounce of talent I have to angst and despair. But jeez, it's gonna be present day soon, and I figured, maybe I could give a humorous fanfiction as a present to my two and a half (?!) fans (?!). Present day rules.
HUGE BIG FUCKING DISCLAIMER (tm): None of this is canonically accurate, none of this belongs to me, and none of this at all is serious. None of it. None. None of this is serious.
JEGUS TAKE THE WHEEL
Rose Lalonde had no idea that her day would be absolutely changed by Carrie Underwood. As it was, she had no particular feelings towards the country singer. She felt about Carrie Underwood the same way most people feel about... say... cucumbers. Not delicious or appealing, but not exactly anything to spit out in disgust.
Before The Incident, Rose had been out doing some shopping for Christmas, contemplating why in the world anyone would produce a song about needing, wanting or desiring a hippopotamus to celebrate this particular holiday. Canned music annoyances aside, she managed to find good deals at the mall on some ironically terrible sweaters for Dave, scored a sweet set of exclusive movie posters for John, and spent a little too much on assorted funny gadgets for Jade. Best of all, she went to the fabric store across from the mall and bought her girlfriend, Kanaya, replacement parts for her worn-out sewing machine. She was easy to shop for, Rose had marveled happily, and even if you got her something she loathed, she pretended to love it. She was just that classy.
Arms laden with her purchases, she had walked outside and away from the fabric store to find her/Dave's car in the mall parking lot. With some difficulty she had managed to load everything up and drive to the apartment she shared with Dave. She had to take two trips to the lobby to carry it all, but she got upstairs, unlocked the door, and walked into the living room.
And at the same time, unbeknownst to her, was the start of The Incident.
ONE DAY EARLIER
"I will never understand you humans and your cars!" Karkat Vantas fumed angrily as John pulled over at the gas station.
"What's wrong with them?" John, who had been happily humming along to the the holiday music on the radio, paused, and turned to look at the short-horned troll.
"They take up so much space. They're noisy! They smell fucking bad. And they need constant stops for fuel." Karkat was always negative, but today he had been particularly pissed-off. (The cashier at Best Buy had forgotten to give him his two dollars back, and he'd been grumbling about it for the past seven miles.)
"Well yeah, but it's all worth it, learning to drive when you're 16. Ah, happy memories." John beamed. "I almost killed an old lady once."
Karkat tried not to show interest, but his lack of a sharp comeback made John smirk. "Doesn't sound so bad, huh?" he said, taking advantage of the silence.
"I never said it sounded any good!" Karkat tried to stay bitter, but the brief flash of red flush in his cheeks made John's mischievous smile even wider. "I should teach you to drive," the dark-haired boy chuckled.
"NO FUCKING WAY!"
"Haha, really? Okay, I could get Dave to. He learned with this weird-ass manual. Says he invented it himself. I think he cheated though. Rose basically just lent him her copy."
"There's a manual?! I have to go find a dumb manual just to pilot one of your human transport rectangles?!"
"Oh yes. The DMV booklet."
"..." Karkat lapsed into annoyed silence. John chortled, and drove him home.
The next morning Karkat woke several hours earlier than he could have. This was mostly because his doorbell was ringing so much his head began to throb before he opened his eyes. Screaming bloody murder, he ran downstairs and yanked open the door, nearly banging himself in the head with it.
"John told me you were interested in driving lessons." Dave Strider said, leaning against Karkat's door in that annoying I-am-just-SOOOOOOO-cool patented Strider fashion. Before Karkat could slam it in his face, he slipped inside and shut it himself. "I can help you with the Ultimate Manual Method! Holy shit, dude, it's so easy a baby could do it. Hell, a baby's baby could. A dog might be able to. You can even drive today if you learn quickly enough."
"AND WHY WOULD I WANT TO DO THAT?!" Karkat screeched, losing patience already. But Dave was prepared.
Karkat just needed some convincing.
Ring ring.
"Hello?" Rose picked up her phone from the coffee table, and was greeted by Kanaya's soft murmur. "Hello."
"Oh, hi, Kan! How are you?" The two fell into incredibly classy flirtatious dialogue as usual, and between quips, Rose glanced out the window to see if it was snowing yet; the forecasts had been mostly right this week. Instead, she saw something else. Something worse.
The car was there, but it was acting... different.
It was moving very slowly and with many errors through the apartment parking lot. It lurched on turns... and suddenly it began speeding faster and faster.
"Kanaya, I have to go. I'll call you back!" A note of panic crept into her voice as she said goodbye quickly and ran downstairs, into the lobby, and out onto the street. As if in slow motion, she saw the car... moving... speeding... hurtling down the road until
SMASH! SCREEEEEEEEEE!
The car crashed spectacularly into a curb, crunching against the pavement. Rose's scream of mingled anger and horror was lost in the horrible symphony of metal on cement. No one looked to be hurt, but all the same, in less than a minute red and blue lights were flashing and the police were on the scene. To her horror, they led Dave... and... (KARKAT?! it couldn't be) out of the car, and made them explain. Their mouths were moving very fast and Karkat was holding a manual in his hands. Dave was wearing that goofy grin he wore when trying to charm his way out of situations, but it wasn't working on the stern policewoman.
Rose had seen enough. She went to the storage shed, found her bike, and headed up the road. Up close, she could see both culprits were white, shaking and terrified-looking. Karkat kept talking about Jegus and how terrible Jegus was.
"WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!"
Rose proceeded to give the pair of them the longest lecture of their lives. She wrenched the booklet out of Karkat's hands and stomped off, looking back only to glare at Dave with eyes that could've melted iron.
Alone in her room now, with her rage reaching boiling point, she opened the manual to read it. There were many blank pages and empty margins. In fact, the book was entirely empty... but for one section. In the middle, where there should have been driving tips, there was the following, written painstakingly neatly with illustrations of a bearded man forcibly seizing the steering wheel from someone who looked an awful lot like Dave himself.
HOW TO DRIVE ANY CAR BY DAVE STRIDER
Jesus take the wheel
Take it from my hands
Cause I can't do this on my own
I'm letting go
So give me one more chance
Save me from this road I'm on
Oh, Jesus take the wheel
Oh, I'm letting go
So give me one more chance
Save me from this road I'm on
From this road I'm on
Jesus take the wheel
Oh, take it, take it from me.
Oh, wow, ohhhhh.
LA FIN