Atop the eastern pinnacle was a small triangular meadow an acre wide, broken only by a single tree and a few boulders of glassy black volcanic rock. Tiny winter flowers were in bloom, bringing splashes of blue and red to the prickly brown grass. The ground underneath was rich and black; the famously fertile black soil of Outset had probably been treated by some ancient culture, judging from the abundance of charcoal and old rupees one could find so easily in it. "Best view on the island," said Dave as the group stopped to catch their breath. He and Jade stood side-by-side almost on the precipice, looking out across the waters. The choppy waves of the Great Sea spread out below them like an endless sheet of beaten iron, its thousand-thousand islands mere blips of black on the horizon. The clouds above, unbroken by the slightest sunbeam or streak of blue, were like a perfect dome of silver.
"You've never been up here," Jade accused, ruining the moment. "The path was completely overgrown! You were cutting down saplings taller than I was!"
"Sure have," Dave countered, arms folded across his chest. "It's just that I always climb up here. Hop from rock to rock like a majestic mountain goat. But I knew you guys couldn't manage it so we took the path."
"I could so have made the climb," said Jade, stamping her foot.
"No you couldn't have," said John, making his presence known from his vantage atop one of the boulders. Jade sometimes forgot that his hearing was as good as hers was.
"No, I couldn't have," she admitted.
"Besides," Dave continued as if she hadn't said anything at all, "most things are taller than you are."
"I'm going to push you off the cliff into the ocean," she said sweetly. "John will back me up. No one will ever know."
John was looking in the other direction, as he always did when his sister and best friend were black-flirting. This time however, it wasn't from third-wheel discomfort. Instead, through his telescope he was watching the Grimdark in its battle against the monster. It was too close for them to rely on the catapult anymore; they had produced a few light cannon and were pelting the thing with grapeshot. The monster, however, was too fast for them and deftly avoided their attacks. When it got too close however, they would just loose a barrage of arrows, clearly too weak to kill it, but painful enough to make the thing back off. But they'd run out of arrows eventually. "We should go, guys," he called, ears lying back warily. "Both of them want that girl, and we should protect her as well as we can." He jumped down to the ground and walked to them determinedly.
"What if she's with the pirates?" Jade asked. "It could happen!"
John gave her an unamused look. "Jade, that is silly. She's clearly in danger from both of them. Why would we even think anything else ever?" Turning to Dave; "before I forget," he said, handing Dave the telescope, "happy birthday!"
Dave whistled. "One of your treasured heirlooms? Don't I feel special." He put it up to his eye. "What were you looking at just now? Oh," he said, spying the monster locked in combat with the pirates. "You're right, we should go."
"Wait," said Jade, fishing for something in her bag. "Here's my present," she said, handing it over. A pair of silver-framed, horn-rimmed sunglasses. "I traded Beedle all my sea-shells for it," she said proudly.
"That's a lot of fucking sea-shells," John said, helpfully.
"Apparently they belonged to the hero Ben Stiller," Jade said. "I'm not sure I believe him, but they're still really cool! …Right?" They both looked at Dave expectantly.
Without further ado, he flipped the shades onto his face, where some stray beam of light struck the left lens with an almost audible gleam.
"Soooo cool," Jade giggled.
"Wait, they might have touched that guy's weird, kinda gaunt face?" asked John. "You didn't tell me that!"
Dave strode back towards the path. "They're so cool I'll never take them off. Even to sleep." He didn't thank his friends. He didn't have to; they both knew he was a big soft ball of fluff on the inside.
The bridge was a simple one made of ancient driftwood and chains that seemed to have once been very fine, until countless years of ocean spray had rusted them into a creaky horror-show that left a bloody colored mess on the children's hands as they walked across. Hundreds of feet high, buffeted by high wind, it spanned the narrowest point between the two halves of the island. Far below, a mass of jagged rocks stretch upwards like reaching fingers. At low tide, it became an expanse of ever-changing tide-pools that you could walk across with ease and explore at leisure. Now, it was like the swirling maw of Charybdis. They crossed without incident.
It was quiet in the fairy forest, and surprisingly warm, with a shelf of rock all around keeping out the wind. No one had ever come here to harvest wood, so the ground was thick with growth and ancient trees that had toppled on their own. The canopy was so thickly interwoven that the sky was almost hidden, and the place was suffused with a shadowless, pale green light. It was a sleepy sort of place, a place where things never really happened. Until now. "Not even one wild pig," Jade mumbled. "I thought rescuing maidens would be more exciting."
Dave clicked his tongue. "I almost prefer it this way. Just don't tell Bro how boring this was or he'll make me go out and fight a gyorg with a knife in my teeth or something."
"Shit," said John, "I'd like to see that!" And so, he led his friends into the woods. They talked and joked like this for over an hour, occasionally calling out. "Hey! Girl! We're here to save you or whatever," Dave shouted, without enthusiasm.
"We're friendly!" Jade shouted through cupped hands, awkwardly shouldering her harpoon. "We have cake! Well, we will tonight! Hey, wanna come over for dinner?! I'll set you up with John!"
John jumped. "What?" he snapped, ears lying back in hostility.
Hands on her hips, Jade said, with a playful sneer, "The only girl your age on the island is me John! How else are we gonna get you married off? We'd have to send away for some city girl who'd sneer down her nose at us poor inbred country-folk even though she was probably giving it away on the street corner the week before—"
"Okay, you can no longer hang out with Karkat," John said, pointing. "It's forbidden! I forbid you!"
Ignoring him, Jade continued with a look of self-satisfaction, "—and now a girl falls out of the sky, practically right in your lap! It's destiny John—"
He snatched her glasses and ran off, laughing. Jade brandished her harpoon threateningly and charged after him. "Glass is expensive you fuckass!" Dave sighed and walked in her wake, muttering about energetic people.
"You keep using that word," John shouted over his shoulder. "I do not think it means what you think it mea—"
He smacked into something hard and fleshy and fell on his ass. "Shit." A thick-bodied Bokoblin loomed over him, dressed in rags and tanned pigskin, a gnarled staff in his little, rat-like hand. The blue-skinned creature had the mouth of a frog but with a lower jaw that could crunch through bone, set with heavy tusks that would be the envy of any boar. Likewise it had the snout of a pig and ears like a bat's, and a single horn on its spotty forehead unlike any other animal. He opened his mouth and licked his snout with a tongue of the most vibrant magenta, and made a sound from deep in the back of his throat like a crow mating with a toad, hefted his stick—
And promptly dropped it because of the six-foot harpoon now embedded in his shoulder. Dave ran in, almost too quick to be seen, and launched the Bokoblin into the air with a hefty stroke of his sword. It landed a few feet away, leaking luminescent pink, and twitched wildly until it suddenly stopped. "Still wishing for wild pigs, Jade?" Dave asked.
Wordlessly, John's sister approached him and held out her hand. He took it. "No, I want my glasses!"
"Help me up first!" While the two squabbled, Dave went over to the monster and pulled out the harpoon. As he did so, its vest opened up, revealing an exquisite necklace shaped like a butterfly. Dave clicked his tongue, and slipped it into his pocket. The Bokoblin wouldn't need it anymore.
"—I'm farsighted," said Jade.
"No, you thought he was me," said John.
"I see the girl," said Dave, pointing up into the canopy. The siblings turned to gawk.
Hanging from a branch by her bright pink sash, she appeared to have passed out. At first John thought he was looking at a ghost. Her short hair was as white as bone, and stood in stark contrast to her skin, which had been completely and carefully covered by war-paint so dark a grey it was nearly black. Her dress was a simple, heavy black gown, with something that may have been either a scowling skull or a heavily stylized sea-monster sewn onto the front. The only color on her was the sash, in which were sheathed a pair of daggers with skulls for pommels.
"Jade," said Dave, "poke her with your harpoon, see if you can't get her down."
"Idiot," she said, "it's like twenty feet high, I can't reach. And she'll never want to marry John if his sister perforates her. You need to think about these kinds of things." As they argued, John's ears twitched, detecting a vaguely rhythmic sound. No, it was two sounds coming from opposite directions. Footsteps? He could see the rock walls on either side of the wood, so probably not. Also, they were too far and coming from—
Wing-beats, muffled by the thick canopy. There was a cry like a tortured goat, and a pair of kargarocs dropped through it, suddenly audible, carrying a pair of Bokoblins nearly identical to the first. They were like enormous vultures, but endowed with fabulous colors; deep blue bodies, white-tipped wings, maroon heads and necks, feathered unlike their smaller cousins, and their legendary tails, long like a mammal's and covered in green and gold quills. One of them directed its hateful, intelligent gaze at John and bellowed, a stuttering, mammalian sound, and then both of them dropped their cargoes and flew off into the sky.
"We should use some kind of unison attack," said John, as the Bokoblins advanced, machetes drawn.
"You mean rush them all at once?" asked Dave. "I like it."
Jade laughed. "He means, like, you throw me up into the air and he jumps up and smacks me with his hammer and somehow I'm not hurt and I hurdle at the enemy like a cannonball, then I throw my harpoon in midair in slow motion and it breaks the sound barrier and shatters rocks and burns down the whole forest! And then they get back up because it only does five damage each."
"John," said Dave, taking on a paternal air, "You're not allowed to play those role-playing games anymore. They rot your brain."
"Fuck you guys," said John, flushing, "Let's just rush them!" And he charged at the nearest Bokoblin. It grunted in surprise, presumably used to having boys John's age be terrified of him, and just barely managed to bring up its machete as John brought the hammer down.
The next swing dented the blade. The third swing pushed back the Bokoblin, and it was a testament to its strength that it didn't drop the weapon from the furious ringing that must have been be working its way up its arm. It was a testament to John's strength that he swung a twenty pound hammer one-handed four times in such quick succession that his opponent could do nothing but hold. The fourth blow snapped the machete in two, and the Bokoblin jumped back at the last second, narrowly avoiding a similar fate. John, having overextended himself, just barely managed to turn as it lunged at his face with an open-handed blow, leaving three deep furrows in his cheek.
The monster's momentum kept it going, and John raised his knee into its stomach, bending the creature over his leg. With both hands, John swung the hammer at its back, and left it dead with a sickening crunch. He wiped away the blood with his sleeve and turned just in time to see Dave and Jade pin their Bokoblin to the ground with a simultaneous strike of their weapons. It shrieked, then coughed out a gob of its magenta lifeblood, and lay still.
Dave looked over at John. "Damn, it's Egbert the Barbarian breaking fools over his knee like he was their goddamn daddy! Trying to make up for screwing up the first one huh? Well it worked." He flicked something at John with a crystalline chime and he snatched it out of the air without thinking. A red rupee of surprising purity, quartz crystals carved into hexagons about the size of a thumb. "Money?"
"Your share of the spoils bro." Dave announced.
"You're looting the corpses?" John asked with a lopsided grin. "Who's been playing too many RPGs?"
"You don't want it? Then just give it here," Dave said, holding out his hand. John put the rupee away. The sound of wood groaning, then splintering, tortured his sensitive ears, and Jade shouted, "Hurry John she's falling! Catch her or she'll die!" Without a word John dropped his hammer and ran toward the tree, just managing to catch the falling girl.
From up close, she wasn't really that bad looking. She had a delicate, aristocratic face, long curly eyelashes, nice full lips, and, John noticed with a start, long furry ears like he and Jade and Nana did. He'd thought they were the only ones. Her eyes fluttered open and he almost made a fool of himself by gasping at the brilliant lilac color but caught hims—
"Drop me at once," she said, holding, holding a thick black needle under John's chin; a dribble of blood slid down it to the skull-shaped pommel. Huh. Guess it wasn't a dagger after all. "Or I will slide this up through your soft pallet and into your brain. Then I will unleash a burst of magical energy that will likely leave you headless and my dress quite ruined."
John dropped her unceremoniously. "No way to treat your rescuers," he said, stepping back to a safe distance.
She stood up and looked around, needle held between her fingers like a pencil. The girl was the same height as John, with a slender build and a commanding presence. Her expression was curious, but not surprised. She projected an air of eminence, as if she had more of a right to be here in the fairy forest than did these children who'd lived near it their entire lives. It was not arrogance, John decided, but something more like the supposed divine right of kings. If there had still been kings.
"I suppose you'll want a reward," she said, looking at his friends as if just noticing them. "Very well, we won't raze your village to its foundations." There was a stunned silence as it became apparent to the group that they may have miscalculated some things.
Then Jade laughed. She would treat with kings, if there were still kings, based only on how well she liked them. "See you guys? She really is a pirate!" She strode forward and proffered her hand with a big grin. "I'm Jade Egbert! This is my brother John and our friend Dave Strider. What's your name, Ms. Pirate?"
Hesitantly, she said, "Captain Rose Lalonde, of the Grimdark," and took Jade's hand, allowing the other girl to shake. The two made an interesting pair, almost a complete inversion. "And that was just a joke. I wouldn't destroy such a small village, but one does have a reputation to maintain," she said with a very small smile. "I need to at least threaten."
Jade turned to John and winked. 'She's a captain John! We're moving up in the world."
"A pirate with a snarky sense of humor," said Dave, "my life is now complete."
"I am still a pirate, Mr. Strider," said Rose, warningly, "and will not hesitate to decapitate you." Turning to John, she said, "Mr. Egbert, I trust you are not seriously injured?"
John rubbed his chin. He was no longer bleeding. "Good," said Rose, "Now how do we leave?"
Just as John, in the lead, set foot on the bridge, a pretty troll with blue wings swept down from the sky and landed behind him. "Captain," said Aranea, kneeling, "Abraxas has tired from fighting."
"Excellent," said Rose. "We shall pursue the beast, and I will slay him, and place his mask on the mainmast for all to see that even the gods must fear the Grimdark." Jade turned to John and mouthed 'badass', with a look of pure exuberance.
Aranea jumped to her feet and shook her head violently. "You don't understand Captain! He's not fatigued, he's bored. He lost interest in us and he's heading—" She turned northward; the ship was visible, close enough to see the monstrous figurehead that took up most of her prow, but the green and white abomination was nowhere to be seen. "Oh sweet Nayru where is he?!" Aranea shouted.
Abraxas' horrid crowing sounded from somewhere entirely too close. John turned and found himself staring into the monster's burning yellow eyes, each bigger than his head. Dave immediately leapt into action, lunging for his left eye with his sword, and was immediately slapped away, smacking into the stony cliff with a loud *thwack*. With that same green hand, gnarled and scarred, with ragged green claws, he reached for Rose, who already had both needles drawn and crackling with magical energy—
Only to be shoved aside by Jade. Those enormous green fingers closed tightly around her, and with its free hand the monster launched itself into the sky, the force of his departure shattering the bridge chains and sending John plummeting to his doom. He briefly thought the last thing he would ever hear was the wind whistling in his ears, carrying his sister's voice as she called for him.
He was wrong. He looked up, and saw Rose the pirate Captain gripping his had with a look of grim determination on her face. "By Din you weigh a ton," she shouted through clenched teeth, "but I am not going to let you go." And then there was a sense of shifting and a hideous crack like a bomb going off in a glass house, and the ground Rose was laying on slid forward and flipped them both out into the open air.
Falling to his certain death for the second time today, Rose still clinging to his hand, he felt his ears twitch to one side as they filled with yet another unknown noise, an almost liquid sound cutting through the air. He noticed Rose's ears doing the same, and for the first time in his life noticed the oddness of that jerking motion applied to a human being; it was like they had a mind of their own. Some of her makeup had rubbed off around her jaw, and he saw that her natural skin color was a nearly translucent white. Her eyes were wide with terror, filled to the brim with that alien color, and John thought it a treat, to have seen what no one else had likely ever seen; the dread pirate Rose Lalonde without her queenly mask.
All of this happened in an instant, the space of time it takes to jump. Then something hard took John in the side and he saw Rose's head jerk hard against—
The mailman's chest. "Are you an angel," John muttered, half-joking. The sound had been Karkat, gliding through the air on his silent moth-wings as quickly as he possibly could. He now held both children, one in each arm, and looked upwards stoically. As he reached the peak of his flight, he extended his brilliant red wings and began to descend in a lazy spiral. "Yes Egbert, I'm an angel. Now stay in school and eat your vegetables or I'll fucking drop you."
Author's Note: My fics all have recurring motifs. The Thief of Prospit's motif is color, despite being inspired by a black and white film. Trollish Layer's motif is thought, despite not being about any damn thing. None of these were conscious decisions, it just sort of happened, and it doesn't mean anything. The motif for this fic appears to be Princess Bride quotes. See?
In my headcanons, Jade is actually the tallest of the original kids. I made her more petite in this story for some reason, maybe to match up with Aryll more.
Abraxas' design is based on actual Gnostic images of worship I found. And why shouldn't he look different from the browser logo? Echidna looks nothing like hers. That said, his behavior at the end there was lifted right off the Songbird from Bioshock Infinite. Now there's an idea; Biostuck Infinite Double-Reacharound. So boss.
And John's RPGs are of course pen-and-paper ones. Of course.