Odd One Out – Chapter 1
"Royal flush."
Groans circled the table.
"How do you manage to win every time?" John asked, throwing his cards into the pile.
"Magic," Dave replied.
"I think you're cheating," Rose said. "I just haven't figured out how. Please pull up your sleeves, if you would."
"Jegus, I'm not cheating. I'm just good at cards." Nevertheless, Dave obliged, pulling up his sleeves. "I used to play with Bro all the time. He cheated. I just had to learn how to be better than him. I'm better than a cheater."
"Hm. I don't quite believe that, Strider. Perhaps your iShades have some sort of x-ray property? Or ink recognition? I request that you—"
"Fuck's sake, Rose, I'm not taking off my fucking shades. I never take them off, we've been over this a hundred fucking times."
"Yes, not even while you sleep, I know." Rose rolled her eyes and tossed the cards into the pile. "Fine. I concede defeat."
"Good job, Dave!" Jade cheered. "You're a great card player. And for the record, I don't think you're cheating."
"I am the king of poker. I win all of the chips. All of them. I am the big man scoring cards." Dave took the rest of the cards and shuffled. "What do you want to play now?"
"How about Go Fish?" John suggested.
"Jegus, John, seriously. Go fish. Really."
"Why? What's wrong with Go Fish?"
"Fine, okay, Go Fish it is." Dave began to deal.
"I love this game!" Jade said, snatching up her cards with excitement. "No one will ever play it with me, though."
"Why not?" John asked.
"Oh shit," said Dave. "You know the pairs everyone has, don't you."
"I—I'll pretend not to, though!" Jade said. "Come on, guys, please?"
Dave shrugged, John just laughed and Rose gave a smirking smile.
"Hey, do you think the trolls type in their blood colour?" John asked suddenly, sorting through his cards.
"Where the hell did that come from," Dave said.
"I was talking to Karkat yesterday and he said something about it."
"Jegus, just ignore that fuckass."
"I can't do that, Dave! He's my friend."
"You have weird taste in friends."
"I know. I'm friends with you." John grinned a toothy grin.
Dave ignored the playful jab. "Why do you even care if that's what they do."
"Come on, Strider. Don't you have any curiosity regarding the culture norms of the aliens?" Rose asked. "This is really remarkable, if you think about it. We're talking to another intelligent species."
"I just don't understand why we're talking about it." Dave tossed a pair of cards into the little pile by his elbow. "Their blood. That's a goddamn creepy place to start."
"Because it's interesting, obviously. Not all of us are shallow," Rose said. "Also, blood seems to be very important to them."
"Besides, everything Karkat says is kind of funny. He argues with his past and future selves all the time! Do you do that, Dave?"
"Of course I don't. I'm a fucking wizard of cool. All mes are equally awesome, except Alpha Dave is a little cooler because he actually gets to fucking live."
"That's kind of…sad, Dave. Do you want to talk about that?" John asked. Dave glanced over. He looked pretty worried. Gogdammit.
"Not even a little bit," Dave replied. "Go fish."
"Tell us more about the trolls, then, John!" Jade said. She gave Dave an encouraging smile. He wasn't sure what to do so he left his face blank.
"Oh, well, I don't really know. It was sort of hypothetical. I'm not even sure if it's true. I mean, from what the others seem to say, Karkat doesn't write in his colour. I don't think they even know what his colour is."
"Terezi probably does," Dave said. "She can taste colours like they're fucking candy or something."
"Wouldn't that require licking him?" Rose asked. "Or his blood, rather?"
"I don't know, she can smell them, too. Don't ask me, I'm not a troll. I just know she has weirdass hyper colour senses."
"Did she tell you that? She's the only one you really talk to, correct?"
"Jegus, Rose. Why do you care who I talk to."
"I don't. I don't at all. It just helps me clarify the bigger picture."
"I don't know, she talks about sniffing or licking the fucking screen all the time like some kind of space slug. I've sort of just started ignoring it."
"She said that to me, too," John said.
"No, I understood that part. I'm wondering how you know her senses are good enough to know Karkat's colour without it being visible." Rose tapped the table with her fingers, thinking.
"Just believe me on that, okay. She knows things even you dumpasses don't."
"Oh? Like what?" Rose smiled, eyes twinkling with secretive curiosity.
"Like stuff. Jegus, Rose, it's been your turn forever, do something or pass."
"Jade, do you have an ace of spades?"
"Go fish!" said Jade. She was enjoying the game, even though she had to carefully balance the number of pairs she got against the number she "missed". She didn't want to win all the cards, though she easily could—that wouldn't be fun for everyone else!
"I wonder why Karkat would hide it," John said. "Isn't it a big deal in troll culture? Vriska was telling me something about the h…hero… I don't know, blood scale."
"Hemospectrum?" Rose suggested.
"Yeah, that."
"Maybe he's an anomaly," Rose said. "Or perhaps he's very low on the scale." She paused. "Or perhaps he's very high on the scale, I suppose that could be a possibility, too."
"Jegus, maybe he just doesn't want people to know," Dave said, frowning. "Not everyone is so cool having everything out on the open."
"Yeah!" John grinned. "Not everyone is like Dave. They aren't all chill about everything."
Dave adjusted his sunglasses but didn't give rise to John's teasing.
"It's difficult to fathom, though. It seems to be a strange reason to dictate text colour," Rose said.
"Well, Rose, we're pretty strange, too! Our text is the same colour as our eyes, isn't it?" John laughed.
"Not everyone," Rose said. "Dave has red text."
"Oh, that's true." John chuckled. "Sorry, Dave! I forgot. That would have been weird, wouldn't it? Haha."
Dave folded his cards in his hand. "Yeah. Really weird."