Another day, another blockhead made a mistake and now Mituna had to fix it. It wasn't that he minded programming; far from it. What he did NOT like, however, was having to edit the same exact string of code twenty times each day. That, he grimaced, was the very definition of tedium.
"[S word]heads," Mituna muttered to himself, pausing absently to scratch at the base of his right forehorn. Admittedly, ~ATH was one of the world's hardest programming languages, but Skaianet had the world's smartest programmers, and a thirty-day training camp in the color-sensitive code before one went to work was mandatory per the orders of Jake Harley, the company's founder and CEO. People should at least try to pay attention.
Which, for humans, was easier said than done in most cases. Mituna was a goldblooded troll, naturally inclined to possess the thinkpan buzzing of an engineer and retaining his species' almost single-minded desire to get things done quickly and correctly. Although they still had the potential to overlook things, trolls were still often more useful than humans in that regard.
Harley didn't discriminate, though. A person of species, whether they be human, troll, or Carapacian, was welcome at Skaianet so long as they were good at their assigned task. Mituna had to admit, there needed to be more people like Harley in the universe.
Then again, if there hadn't been discrimination against others, then Mituna's ancestor, whom the goldblood was named after, might not have gotten some of the troll population off of their old planet, Alternia. Had that not happened, their legacy would've gone silent when the monstrous green thing that breathed dark matter and made its piles inside black holes showed up and ate all native Alternian life (sans the trolls and the DNA codes they'd stored online) to extinction.
So there was that.
After some time, Mituna heard the sharp clicking noise of their alarm. He checked his computer's clock. 5:12:30 PM. Right on time. He packed up his laptop (it would've been a husktop on Alternia but the creatures those were made from weren't adapted to consuming Earth life) and slipped on his iconic helmet. Even though Earth's sun was much smaller than Alternia's, a G2V to their F7V, most trolls still sunburnt very easily.
As he made his way out, he saw a familiar face. "Hey Kurloz," he said, affectionately bumping his shoulder against the other's. The troll in question, a wild-haired purpleblood in full gray skeletal clown makeup, perked up immediately and signed excitedly.
"Wow, they really liked your idea for Cetus' new interface, huh?" Kurloz nodded yes. "How's Meulin?"
Kurloz signed something that made Mituna chuckle. "Heh. Well it's not like there are any really heterosexual trolls, not many at least, so she may get her wish yet. Anyway dude, I gotta go back to my hive." Kurloz nodded knowingly and pressed his forehead against the goldblood's. "See ya."
As Kurloz left, Mituna heard an audible chuckle. "My, what would Latula say if she saw that?"
"She'd approve of it and shut up, Wilford."
The bulky white Carapacian laughed a heavy laugh as he joined his coworker on his way out. "Ah, you trolls and your fourway romances never cease to amuse me."
"Better to have them all separated out then have that cluster[f word] you and the humans call chestnut romance." The name had come from the combination of the red, faded pink, dark gray, and black of the troll quadrants being a reddish-brown color reminiscent of the seeds of one of Earth's native trees.
"I suppose your way has its merits. Speaking of, did you know there's a new security guard coming next week?"
"No, but I take it the Midnight Crew told you?"
"Yep. Stubborn guy named Spades Slick. Dersite. Fresh out of college and tired of dealing with everyone. Perfect for chasing down dumbheads."
"Spades? Oh no, we've got a full suit. What mischief are they going to get up to now?"
"Don't know, but we shall see! See you next week, Captor!"
"You too, Kingsley." Wilford got onto his bus while Mituna fetched his bike, and they parted ways at last.
Humans believed that life mates should live together in the same house, as did Carapacians. Trolls, however, still had trouble shaking off their ancestral territoriality, so generally speaking there was only one troll per hive. They did believe in some contact, though, so matespirit hives were always adjacent and joined by a tunnel connecting their basements.
Mituna had lived in an apartment complex before learning of a suitable hive that had just been vacated. Its total floorspace was about 1800 square feet, more than enough for his purposes. It was shaped like his old apartment too, thin and tall, which he liked.
"Ugh," he grunted as he removed his bags and slumped onto a faded yellow loungeplank facefirst. "No one make me use my [f word]ing hands for the next ten hours." No one was there, but he might as well say it. He was about to go to sleep when his phone rang. "Gog [d word]it," he grumbled.
He pulled it out and turned on the speaker, not even bothering to get up. He designed the stupid thing, he knew where each button on the touchscreen was by pump biscuit. "Who is it?"
"TUNA! You gotta come quick!" That would be his matespirit, Latula Pyrope, a tealblooded troll employed as a workplace safety lawyer.
"Latula, this had better be important."
"It is! The kids are coming!"
That did it. One blast of his psionics and Mituna was flying off the couch and landing on his feet. "On my way!"
Mituna scrambled up the stairs and burst into Latula's living room. "Have I missed anything?!"
"Tuna, calm down, hatching takes time," Latula said gently. "They just started rattling is all. But hey, you wouldn't want to miss your child's birth, right?"
"Not for anything," Mituna affirmed, kissing her temple. He stared at the two roughly apple-sized eggs nestled in a box on the table. One was dark yellow, the other medium teal. Their children.
Once, trolls had been oviparous, like spleenfowl and megaticks. When the Empire was founded they were instead forced to combine their gametes inside of a distant evolutionary cousin, the Mother Grubs, since the old way wasn't nearly fast enough to pump out barrelfuls of cannon fodder. But Earth's lower oxygen levels weren't nearly enough to support a train-sized arthropod, so the old way had returned in full force.
Not that Mituna minded terribly much. The old way felt much more...preferable than jerking it into a bucket and calling it a day.
His thoughts were interrupted by a light, almost imperceptible crack. He shook his head to end his daze and peered into the box. The teal egg was shaking more violently than it had been earlier. Latula held her hands up to her face in shock.
More cracking. A pearl of cyan albumen trickled out of the growing crack at the top of the egg. Two tiny golden spires poked out, followed by a thin mop of black hair. Within five minutes, a six-legged teal eruciform larva with a gray-skinned humanoid head was peeping up a storm, her eyes completely teal.
"Awwwwww, c'mere little lady!" Latula cooed, scooping up her daughter and immediately proceeding to lick her clean. Humans found that practice weird, but trolls were not known to care about human standards. The frightened peeping turned into pleased murmurs.
More cracking directed Mituna's attention to the other egg. With much less fuss, a honey yellow grub with two pairs of thin horns emerged, dripping lemon yellow fluid. Mituna performed the same treatment on his son, who double-chirped meekly during the ordeal until it was done.
"Welcome to the world, son," Mituna said softly.
Twenty minutes later, the siblings huddled next to each other, sleeping peacefully. Trolls, like Carapacians and unlike humans, could and needed to eat solid food as soon as they were born. A pair of clementines sacrificed their lives for the grubs' first meal.
Latula tucked a white stuffed dragon next to her daughter's form, while Mituna did the same with one shaped like a two-headed cyclops. Kankri had suggested the lusus plushes, citing that a) Earth-born trolls needed to learn their heritage even if most of said creatures were long relegated to computer simulations and old textbooks, and b) it had worked on his own grubs, Kanaya and Karkat.
"So what are we gonna name them?" Mituna asked quietly. "I was thinking Sollux for the boy, since that means 'sunlight'. Plus the whole Pollux-n-Castor name reversal thing."
"You should totally do that! It's pretty radical," Latula chuckled. "I'm havin' trouble comin' up with one for our daughter."
"Well hey, your signs are Libra for the humans, right? The one that's the scales in their stupid-[a word] horoscopes?"
"So...something to do with balance, then?" She took out her phone and found a translator sight. "Okay, I'm gonna translate 'balance' into a buncha languages and see if it coughs up anything cool...nope, nope, what's Xhosa? ...Oooh! Persian's got a doozy!" She showed her matespirit her phone, tapping on the word "Terezi".
"So Terezi it is," Mituna decided. "And Terezi it shall be."