They stood on the roof, swords in hand. Dave cracked up at Jade's colourful pirate sword – it just clashed so badly with her dark grey skin and ruby slippers. Not that Dave thought he'd be better with that sword, but damn. Those were some rad slippers.

"Her Imperious Condescension has duly noted your ridiculous tantrum," Dave ignored her, distracted by the Mayor. He waved at him, gaining a wave back, and only began to listen at the mention of his sword.

"Now take your welsh sword."

"Why?"

"Since you have been identified as the one who must deal English his fatal blow we will need to make sure you are battle ready," Lord English? "And you do not seem very battle ready to me Dave," She stepped into a stance, "Show me what you can do."

"Wait! Since when could use a sword. Also, what's up with that dumb sword?" Jade huffed, crossing her arms and sniffing disdainfully,

"I will not hear another word of such appalling slander about this fine weapon. It's colourful and it's silly and it's a sword. End of story," She huffed again, "As for why I can wield it, I surpassed the need for a strife specibus quite some time ago."

"How?"

"Haven't you climbed any more god tiers over the last few years? What were you even doing on that meteor?" she asked accusingly.

"Oh, yeah no. I climbed a few, yeah." Dave lied, thinking of how he spent three years expanding can town with the Mayor and antagonising Karkat over Terezi.

"What badges do you have on your kiddie camper handysash?" Oh crap.

"Which ones do you have?" Nice save Strider.

"I asked you first." Crap, crap, crap.

"Show me your badges and you can see mine," he smirked. That was a great save, "I want to scope out this universal specibus badge that sounds pretty cool actually." It did. He wondered what coloured it be. Would it be brown like a Girl Scouts? Oh god. Now he's missing Thin Mints.

"Dave," she drew out his name, "We both know neither the kiddie camper handysash not the badges sewn onto it are real objects." Really? God dammit.

"Oh yeah. It's pretty easy to forget sometimes though." He hoped she'd believe him.

"Yeah." Drawing out the word made it seem like she didn't believe him.

Time to evacuate before you seem like a proper idiot.

"I think we're getting side-tracked by the kiddie camper shit. Are you really suggesting that we do an actual sword fight right now?" She moved back into her previous stance, "Like for training purposes?" He asked, just to clarify. He really didn't want to do this. Bro would make him do this. On this roof as well.

Jade spewed some evil crap about the empress.

"Will you cut out with the evil Jade baloney? I'm not going to fight you. My rooftop duelling days are over." He stressed the last word as Jade cried,

"En garde!"

Dave tipped his head back, rolling his eyes and groaned,

"Even if we just went balls out jackass bananas with our swords here, I mean realistically how much appreciable advancement in my battle skills would even result from that? Are you actually thinking this though or just going through the vaguely nefarious motions that come with the territory of being 'evildog!Jade'?" She brandished her sword and snarled,

"I'm gonna go through the vaguely nefarious motions of kicking your ass in a minute if you don't put up your dukes!"

He didn't think she wouldn't. She probably be worse than Bro and he told her so. She then spewed some bullshit about 'time trickery'.

"No!"

"Yes!" sensing that a yes/no fight would and could last until the end of time he relented.

"Ok, here I go," Jade's mouth dropped open in surprise, "Wait. Nah." She growled.

"Dave! Just try a little time travel to get this fight started. See look, one of your time doubled is surely predestined to come from a few minutes in the future and appear behind me for a surprise attack, right about." She drew out the 'I' in 'right' before jumping, spinning and shouting,

"Now!" She looked into the air confused. Dave watched, tapping his foot as this went on for a few minutes before she turned to him accusingly,

"Dave, why is your future self being such a wet blanket?" She moaned, pouting.

"I told you. I'm not time traveling. I think I'm giving it up for good actually."

Jade pouted more, rolling her eyes. Dave became very aware of the Mayor standing behind Jade and the Nakodile butting up into him. Damn, that thing it creepy. It's also slightly cute.

"I'm serious. The thing is, being a time guy, like actually mastering time travel, I'm pretty sure that involves is learning to never use it. See, it's like karate."

Dave started pacing and Jade nearly groaned – here we go.

"Well, it's more like what they say about karate. That you learn it so you don't use it, but I mean, we all know the truth about karate is if you know karate then, obviously in reality, you use it all the time. Like doing lethal fucking crane kicks and sweet karate chops while walking down the street just 'cause you can. It's a god damn no brainer that's what you do with karate, but, see, with time travel all the stuff about learning it so you don't have to use it is true. There's no good that can come of it. You can crunch the logic on the loops all you want, but all you're doing is painting yourself into a corner, creating inevitabilities you have to rehearse and enact. Or face death for yourself or everyone you know. Sometimes facing death is the very inevitability you have to rehearse, and then you wait and wait knowing it's coming. Knowing it has to happen. How do you think it made me feel when we were gathering up all those frogs? I knew the whole time in a little while you would have to watch me get shot, but I couldn't say anything or it would mess it all up!" Dave began to slowly get louder until he shouted the word up.

He carried on as Jade got lost in his frenzied cries and just stood there as he ranted non-stop, "But I couldn't say anything or it would mess it all up. All cause I thought it would be cool to be Marty mcfucking Fly. But, instead of shredding Johnny B Goode on guitar to get my parents to bang, my crowning performance was doing a funny dance while getting pumped full of lead! The-"

Jade glanced back at the Mayor, then at Dave and rested her sword against the ground.

"-But the DeLorean was actually a pig, purple moon and the 1980s was me accidently reaching god tier and living on a shitty meteor for a while. And I guess Rose was Doc Brown. Doc Brown accidently reached god tier too. Ok, I guess this is where the analogy falls apart, but you get what I mean?" He imploringly looked at Jade.

She scratched the back of her neck and answered,

"Sorry Dave, you lost me there. After the part where I shot you."

"Damn," His face lit up, "Ok, lemme start over!"

"Oh em gee, no!" Cried Jade.

The conversation moved onto Lord English and Dave not caring about "Lord English or his nebulous atrocities out in nowherespace".

"Jeez, you sure have some issues," Jade sighed, "honestly it has become very tiresome listening to this sort of thing. I though Davesprite had problems," What? Why was Davesprite involved? "His issues I could kind of understand. I thought you might be different, being the Alpha Dave and all. But no," she drew out the 'no' mockingly, "You might be even more messed up inside than he was!"

"What? Why are you dragging that guy into this?" Wait! He needed to investigate, "What happened with you and him anyway?"

"None of your business!" Jade snapped, cheeks becoming a darker black.

"It kind of is – he's bird me. That clearly means I have a right to know."

"That doesn't make any sense!"

"You said he had issues," pushed Dave, "What issues?"

Jade yelled, annoyed,

"Forget I mentioned it!" Now he was suspicious,

"Was he talking shit about me the whole time or something? I know he resents me for being the real Dave."

"Don't say that, you aren't the real Dave!" she replied shrilly, "Well, you are. But phrasing it like that is so mean! He's just as real as you. And when you imply he isn't, you sound like a jerk!" She got into his face.

"Man, I knew it! I knew he was poisoning your view of me all those years and I wasn't there to say anything or defend against his slander. So now you think I'm a neurotic douche!"

"The only reason I think you're a neurotic douche is because you're acting like one now!" She screeched.

"Yeah, but I only started acting like a neurotic douche half way through this conversation! You clearly had an axe to grind with me from the start and I want to know why. What did I ever do to deserve this shit from you?"

"You broke my heart!" She beseeched loudly. Dave stopped, confused.

"What? I did? When?"

"Ok, not you. Davesprite did," He's going to kill him for getting the blame, "But you're basically the same guy!"

And so Dave went on a tangent about how he wasn't Davesprite, Jade rolling her eyes and opening and closing one hand repeatedly while he talked.

"Did you tell him he's got to murder the incredible hulk Jade? No I think not." Jade sighed, spying the Mayor pottering about the Nakodiles. Grimdark took over her mind again, whipping away the sixteen year old she was.

"Dave, I did my best to put all this behind me a long time ago." Her voice took on the smooth quality of a villains, "I did not come here to dredge up any of this drama with you. Besides, such behaviour is unbecoming of Her Condescension's loyal subordinates," Hell no was Dave one of Sea Hitler's dogs, "You can be stubborn all you want, but I will force you to comply with her wishes one way or another. It will be quite easy actually," She began walking to the Carapace, smirking, "All I have to do is target the people you care about most."

Dave's eyes widened,

"Hey! What are you doing?" He stepped forward, "Don't you dare touch the Mayor!" Jade grabbed him and peered down, biting her lip,

"He is a very cute Mayor. It, therefore, pains me to have to do this." Dave ran forward, screaming,

"Get away from him!"

Jade kicked him off the roof as soon as Dave reached her. He doubled over, a sudden pain tore at his chest and a yell of

"No!"

Escaped him.

His mind blanked and he launched himself over the edge of his roof, desperately pushing himself to reach his friend before he was fried by lava.

His heart pounded, panic engulfed his mind and the Mayor hit the lava. Screaming, Dave grabbed him and swooped up. Then he realised that the Mayor hadn't been burned and sobbed,

"Got you!" He squished his cheek against the Mayor's head and sobbed,

"I got you, I got you, I got you, I got you. I'm not letting go, no never again," The Mayor brought his arms up as if he was flying and Dave let out a watery laugh, "Never again. I got you Mayor. Never, never, never again. It's ok, everything will be ok. I have you, you're safe and sound now. It's all going to be alright. It's ok, I won't let her hurt you Mayor. No, no, no, never, never, never."

He repeated this awhile, trying to reassure himself more than the Mayor.

"When this is all over lets run away together, just you and me. We can build a real can town and we'll live there together, alone, all by ourselves and forget this nightmare ever happened." Dave smiled at this idea, perfectly happy with living the rest of his life with the carapace, in a can. Understanding that the Mayor is an alien and probably didn't know what he was saying he did what he'd seen would make the Troll's feel better.

He shooshed-papped the Mayor.

Jade watched all over this, before face-palming and bemoaning the difficulty of being bad.