Housestuck: The Split
Chapter 1: It's About Time
Beginning AN:
Well, this is it. Sorry that this starts out a bit underwhelming, but for the first half I kind of wanted to start out with a sort of meta-throwback to Hecksing Ulumate Crconikals: Where the chapters are written entirely within three days per "Season." Of course, the second half will be more like Housestuck Hurrcain Crconikals, where I spent far more time. But still, I thought that SBIG has been taking itself way too fucking seriously lately. (I mean, Journals of Wisdom, Power, and Courage has a lot of complicated plots going on at once in its Second Half, but it's still ultimately comedy-focused, and not like the old Sweet Jade and Hella John or Housestuck Hurrcain Crconikals which just felt like lore for the sake of lore.) The chapters here are generally intended to be short and simple, until the break between Chapters 6 and 7.
I even wrote a longer version of this, originally, and I think it's pretty much complete, but... eh. I haven't even looked at it recently. I do not want this to become bloated, especially with the three-day deadline.
Welcome to SBIG! This is a series of purposefully badly done stories that care very little with making sense or trying to add any emotional impact. Or... that's the intent. This is sort of like a bad attempt at comedy. Now, two things I try to avoid with this when comparing the installments to other fics done bad on purpose. One is making them unreadable (but this... admittedly wasn't always a major focus of mine). Two is that this isn't going to get... too disgusting. Well, it might in some stories, but it won't rely on grossout factors as an entertainment value, and even the ones that do teeter into uncomfortable territory won't be trying to really 'outdo' other fics that do this. The only thing I try to trump myself in is the plot's stupidity. Not how hard it is to read it, and not how disgusted (or infuriated for that matter) you will be by it.
Disclaimer: The following fan fiction depicts stunts performed by several expert teenagers and one badass hourglass. Do not attempt any of these at home. Seriously, it could mess you up!
So you should have probably read Housestuck Hurricane Chronicles (the "Housestuck" instead of "Homestuck" was intentional I wanted it to stand out more) all the way, and including the ending tail end part where there's a preview for this story.
If you did not, that's okay. I thought it kind of stucked major ass near the end. Like, not the hot ass like my fanart of an older Nepeta, but the kind of old man ass like John's canon Dad or Jade's canon Graddad. I probably should have started with Grandpa.
Anyway, the Rainbow Crew consists of the "human kids" (they're not kids anymore but they're still human, I think they have weird skin colors like John is literally blue) John, Jade, Rose, Dave, Jane, Jake, Roxy, and Dirk. And all of the player trolls: Damara, Rufioh, Mituna, Kankri, Meulin, Porrim, Latula, Aranea, Horuss, Kurloz, Cronus, Meenah, Aradia, Tavros, Sollux, Karkat, Nepeta, Kanaya, Terezi, Vriska, Equius, Gamzee, Eridan, and Feferi. I have OCD a little so I wanted to include all 32 of them eventually no matter how stitty the writing gets. Anyway, the eight humans there used to be a tiny group called the Housestucks who just played games until Doc Scratch pissed them off by hacking the game. So they ended up crossing paths with the latter twelve trolls, the Zodiacs. Meanwhile, the other twelve trolls - the Alphas because they were the alpha session and I merged the eight humans together right from the start - were-
"Um, Mister Narrator?" Oh, it's Jade.
Hi Jade! What do you want?
"Don't characters usually give recaps, and not us? Ezekiel gives them in Total Zeksmit, Rip gives them a... lot, at times. .GIFfany gave one in Escape From Fanservice Island" (AN that one is not for kids okay? It has swearing (okay, yes, so does this) and headless ghosts with blood and towards the end there's a lot of screwing going on) "and... stuff."
Okay this is about you. You give the recap.
"Good!
"The narrator started off with an okay description. The Alphas used to be together, but they broke apart. Then Meenah ended up with a great amount of power, building herself a castle. Before the Zodiacs and Housestucks, who had long merged in to the Rainbow Crew by that point, could go back to Doc Scratch, Aranea came in to tell them that stopping Meenah is more important. By that point, we already had Damara with us - she was kidnapped and forced to work with Doc Scratch, which is also why the Alphas gave up on heroism. We gathered the Alphas, fought Meenah, but she was forgiven and hired on the group later. We're also all the same age, by the way. 18, total adults.
"After a lot of other things - Pikmin trying to castrate Jake and an evil troll empress literally named Troll Empress trying to get us to form a jury - we ended up with this song that can split people to an opposite-sex clone of them sort of based on their 'inner personality,' called a counterpart."
The counterparts was just something I came up with because I was bothered that none of the eight humans had a yellow color, and compared to the trolls almost (limebloods) having a full spectrum the humans just had a lot less colors and it's a dumb idea, also speaking of colors I wanted a full rainbow of all the babes and with John and Equius both being dudes there's no pure blue to-
"Can I continue?"
Yes, please. But I think the counterparts are a dumb idea now.
Jade cleared her throat. "So now there are counterparts! More things happened, and we ended up going back in time where our guardians and 'ancestors' were the same age! We teamed up and found our way to the portal! But before going... we were thinking about adding the guardians to our group. Even if that would cause a time paradox, since in the main timeline they stayed and raised us when we were born. So we used a quantum coin flip. In Housestuck Hurrcain Crconikals Chapter 21, which is when the time travel happened, the coin flip said that we would leave the first generation behind. But here... the coin landed on stay, and Roxy taught the first generation the ability to make counterparts!"
And gender bend!
"That's a stupid element."
Right. Forget it...
"Anyway, here's the story!"
So the first generation was cloned. Honestly, you guys I think at this point like the clone AU version stuff more than I do. I'll come up with the names LATER (Chapter 7?) but until then, you can make them up.
The first gen's counterparts aren't even that important. I tried that already. Everything was too confusing.
So the group was by the same place that Chapter 21 of HHC ended. I honestly don't remember exactly where that was, some kind of... basement time portal base or something? Well, they won't be there for long, so it's not important.
"Now what?" Asked Rose.
"NOW YOU HAVE CREATED A SPLIT TIMELINE! YOU HAVE LOST THE LLAWS TO TIME!"
It was Kamina! For those that don't know, he's a time traveling Spartain. He traveled over there on his Delorean and gave one of his Gurren Lagann lectures about not going through time.
"You should move on the future and accept the past! Here,"
He destroyed the time-splitting quantum coin.
"There. No more time travel."
John just got really angry.
"Really?!" He asked. "Well, that's horrible! What if we need to stop something!"
"It's all about moving foreward. Look, I will let you at least go back to 2011... IF YOU CAN BEAT THIS THING EVEN WE SPARTAINS KIND OF STRUGGLED WITH!"
Then Kamina snapped his fingers, and the group was in Sparta! ...Again? I'm having trouble keeping track of what was before or after Chapter 22.
"I'd like to introduce to you..." announced Kamina like this was some kind of show. Isn't he funny? "THE SHADOW HOURGLASS!"
It just looked like an hourglass, but purple sand and with angry eyes.
"Aw." Said Dave. "THAT'S ADORABLE! :)"
And then the Hourglass suddenly became gigantic and a bunch of sharp teeth came out.
"GAH THAT'S SCARY!"
And then it turned in to this purple flesh blob thingy with a bunch of eyes that were overlapped and mixing, and let out demonic garbles.
"ok now youre just being a dick" Said Dave.
The Shadow Hourglass roared and rewound time so it could roar again and be double-scary. The Rainbow Crew got ready and-
"Wait. Equius." Said Nepeta. "Do you still have the light arrow magic?"
"Ye.s" He replied.
Nepeta shrugged. "Use them."
So he encchanted his arrows with light using the scroll that John and Jade bought from London back in Chapter 15 I think (or 14, the end of the jury arc?). And Equius fired, instantly destroying the Shadow Hourglass.
Kamina, who was supervizing with drinking coffee, spat that coffee out.
"Wait, that almost feels like cheating!" He cried.
"Okay, see that's why I'm the leader." Said Nepeta. "And yes, Sage of Spirit, isn't that a very broken move?"
John went "Hrmph" at Nepeta calling herself the leader, foreshadowing a major conflict.
Kamina sighed. "Alright, fine, you guys can go back to the future."
"That's the present." Said Nepeta.
"No, for you guys... it's the future!"
(2011, the future)
So the team was back and - wait a minute...
There were flags that showed skies with rainbows on them everywhere, which read PRISM CREW. The team looked around a bit.
"Wait a minute..." said Nepeta. "NO. There's no way. It can't be! Is it...?"
"Is it what?" Asked Rose. Not "inquizzikally" as Rose usually would and would say, but reminder that Rose here is kind of a dick.
"I... okay, I should tell you my real story. Why I'm trying so hard to be best leader. And why I want to be important. It all started with... someone. And I think I know that someone is. She's alive in this timeline, and she-"
"What exactly do we have right here...?" Said a meanancing American female voice.
The team looked around and found someone in the shadows with long, flowing hair. Then she jumped out of the shadows. She was a cool-looking tall woman with long light blue hair, she wore a pair of these odd green goggles that looked kinda sinister, and she at first glance had on this tight bodysuit of black that had a golden leo sign on the chest, but on closer inspection it was actually just paint. Just painted on. She smirked at the Rainbow Crew.
"Welcome to the Prism Crew." She said.
"Are you..." Asked Nepeta, "Aibur?"
She smiled. "Of course I am! I am very widely-known, how won't people know my true greatness?"
"Okay, Nepeta, you need to tell us what the fuck this is." Said John.
And you'll find out in three days! Cliffhanger!
Closing AN:
So the next chapter, "Don't Split Yourself," will be a bit longer and more world building-ish. I was juggling this along with the near-releases of Steve Buhvillen's Intriguing Group, something for the second year of run:gifocalypse (that something was The Four Edges of Gravity Falls), and the "finale" of Total Zeksmit Plains.