After Karkat closes the memo (making sure that it closed, the last time he forgot to they were introduced to some new...friends) he grabs his backpack and heads out the door, silently hoping that Crabdad had packed whatever he needs because he sure doesn't have time to go back and grab it now.
As a small afterthought he shouts a goodbye to his lusus before he makes his way to the bus stop five blocks away. The weather is pretty decent besides being so late in the year. It's mildly cloudy, covering up the setting sun and preventing the harmful rays from leaking through. Karkat has to get a firm hold on the jacket he'd grabbed as a playful breeze whirls around him.
He hasn't even skidded to a stop in front of the 'bus stop' sign before he's tackled to the ground by a very hyperactive teal blooded troll. He managed to toss his backpack to the side before landing on it. He's prevented from moving by the troll now sitting atop his chest and licking at his face with what he can tell is a mischievous grin.
"Bluh, get the hell off me you fucking psycho!" He yells, struggling to get out from under her. The troll just chuckles before pinning him more firmly to give him a lick on his nose. He's able to throw her off after she loosens her grip, laughing as she skips away. He scrambles up from his position on the ground with a growl.
"It's hard to resist licking you Karkles, you taste so good!" Terezi exclaims, dancing away from the fist flying towards her face. Karkat growls and throws a few more half-hearted punches the the teal blood dodges, cackling as she runs behind Gamzee. The glare Karkat sends her way doesn't affect her but his moirail notices the angry gaze, looking down from his cloud watching to see Karkat.
"Best friend you need to all up and motherfucking calm down, it's only our first day at school again," The Capricorn drawls, walking over and throwing an arm around the shorter trolls neck.
Karkat mutters something that can't be distinguished due to the fact that his face is smushed against the highbloods chest. Karkat shoves the tall troll away and glares as Gamzee straightens, he has to crane his to look at the Highbloods face.
"Did you seriously get fucking taller over the break?" Karkat repeats, seeing that the last time he'd seen the highblood he was closer to the highbloods shoulders instead of his chest. This fact began to piss off Karkat even more, especially as he saw Gamzee look down at the ground like the 'mirthful messiahs' had put their heads at his feet. Gamzee scratches the back off his head, thoughtful expression on his face, kind-of rare for the stoned troll. He stays zoned out like this for a few more moments before he snapped back to reality.
"Well, it could be motherfuckin' miracles, I don't really pay attention to that kind of stuff, you know that best friend," Gamzee says still totally zoned out with that stupid smile on his face. Karkat glares at him, then at Terezi, realizing she had gotten taller as well. Looks like everyone had had a growth spurt this break. Karkat openshis mouth to say something else on the matter when a lisping voice interrupts him.
"What'th up dou'th bag'th?" Sollux smirks as he walks up to the three of them, holding his husktop even while a basically empty backpack is slung over his shoulder. Kanaya joins in on Sollux's greeting as she walks up behind the yellow blood.
"Greetings to you all," She says primly with a small smile as she recognizes the aftereffects of some sort of argument between Karkat and Gamzee.
"Yeah yeah," Karkat grumbles, not really feeling like saying hi. He glances at them and mutters under his breath when he notices that Captor is a little less than a head shorter than Gamzee and Kanaya was a little shorter than Terezi.
"Now Karkles that's no way to say hello," Terezi grins, licking her lips threateningly. Karkat pales slightly and takes a few steps away from the teal blood, not wanting to get tackled again because that shit hurts. Terezi sidles closer to Karkat, which Sollux notices and puts two and two together. A short laugh bursts out of the hacker and Terezi gives him a confirming smile.
"Got a lick attack KK?"
"Shut the hell up honey for brains," Karkat mutters, keeping a certain amount of distance between him and Terezi.
"Why were you glaring at us Karkat? It isn't the proper reaction to seeing friends after such a long break," Kanaya states, stopping another argument between two trolls before it can start. She looks the at Cancer, waiting for an answer. Karkat grimaces but doesn't reply, instead avoiding her gaze. Terezi cackles again, turning to Kanaya. She can plainly smell practically exactly what he's feeling and she rather likes that advantage over him.
Shorty.
"We all got taller over the break and he's bummed about it," she says confidently then begins laughing at Karkat's anger-smell, which quickly overtakes her senses.
Yum, cinnamon apple.
"Oh, well that is just...strange, did you not get taller?" Kanaya inquires, turning to him. Her eyes scans him, a small smile alighting her lips at his annoyed expression. She has to look down to even see the top of his head, she guesstimates that he's only a tiny amount taller than their cat-like friend Nepeta.
"N-no, shut up ok!" He stutters, yelling the final words as Sollux bursts out laughing. He turns to glare at the Gemini as he walks over.
"You're gonna be th'ort forever!" he crows, placing a hand on Karkat's head, and messing with the trolls already quite messy hair.
Karkat growls, smacking the hackers arm away before punching his shoulder, then going in for another punch. Sollux brushes the blows away, snickering at his futile attempts. Karkat sputters something about all of them being unnaturally tall before moving to tackle the taller troll.
Being so overwhelmed by laughter, Sollux actually allows this, barely fighting back as Karkat sits on his chest and begins yelling at him some more. While all of this transpires, Kanaya pulls out her portable husktop and answers someone who's trolling her, a purple-shaded light flashing.
"Who ya' trollin' invertasister?" Gamzee asks, coming up behind her and looking at her messages. The tall troll has to practically double over to look over Kanaya's shoulder, and the Jade blooded troll realizes that the Capricorn is quite a bit taller than the rest of them, it's a little discerning in a way, as well as a little scary. All the same, she answers his question with a proper amount of politeness.
"Miss Feferi, she is walking the new trolls to school, apparently they met up on the way," she replied, typing a response into her husktop. There's also another person she's trolling, but she's sure he wouldn't understand, so she doesn't mention it. When she says this, Karkat and Sollux look up from their sprawled positions on the ground, Sollux finally getting over his laughing fit and Karkat deeming the conversation more important than yelling at Sollux. Karkat scrambles off of Sollux and walks over to where Kanaya and Gamzee are standing, the yellow blood following close behind. Terezi also sidles over to listen in, although not really participating in the conversation.
Karkat looks at the messages, scanning them rather quickly, then asking, "Wait, does she know their blood color?"
He's curious to the status of the two, and Sollux makes a noise of agreement, because the entrance of new trolls was always something to consider, even though there could be none higher than Feferi's and usually Eridan's, it was possible they could be higher than Gamzee. (But sort of discouraged, subjagglators were not people you wanted to fuck with, and they got a little...unstable when the hemo-spectrum went off-balanced)
"Well, she says that the two of them, a boy and a girl, wear a black and white t-shirt, with some sort of circle and a line through it." She said, furiously typing more responses. It's hard to keep up with two chats without the others noticing, but Kanaya thought she was fairing quite well. A thought entered her think pan as she typed a response to Feferi.
"Kind of like how you wear grey," She continues, glancing at him. Karkat looked away uncomfortably, knowing she's asking, in her own silent way, what his blood color is. Everyone kept making hints about it, after all, The only one who knew was Terezi, which is why he's her main target for lick attacks, since candy apple was her favourite. She's sworn to keep it secret, probably because she wants him all to herself. Karkat's still too worried to tell the others, even if he has nothing to be worry about, like Terezi says.
"How intere'th'ting," Sollux lisps, rubbing his chin in a thoughtful manner. He muses about what that could mean, they obviously wantto hide their blood color, but what if they weren't.. a voice breaks his train of thought and he turns to the teal blood next to him.
"Yes, seems quite odd, I will have to give them a good licking to figure it out," Terezi said with a grin.
Everyone pales at this, "No!" The four of them shouted in unison.
"IF they're th'omeone high up, which th'oudn't be poth'ible, you could get culled!" Sollux yelled, waving his hands around erratically and almost smacking Karkat in the face.
"Not to mention it is quite rude!" Kanaya scolds, pointing her finger accusingly in Terezi's direction as she typed a quick response to her other chat before returning to Feferi's page.
"No one wants to be licked by your damn teal tongue!" Karkat growled, poking Terezi's nose
"Yeah, motherfuckers won't be liking that shit." Gamzee drawls, frowning slightly.
They all shout their part at her, but she just laughs and skips backwards, waving her cane around to keep them from beating up on her even more. Before any of them could yell at her to keep her from doing anything too stupid, the bus arrives with an annoying honk! Karkat glares at their interruption, but Gamzee chuckles and honks back at it, grabbing his back pack and climbing onto it, leaving the others to scramble after him.
Terezi welcomes this, jumping with enthusiasm through the doors, almost hitting the bus driver in the face with her cane. Kanaya and Karkat follow more slowly, looking around to see what this year's seating would be with their other friends on the bus already, besides Feferi and Eridan who often have other things to do as highbloods. And Vriska because she was banned from riding the bus after she set off a smoke bomb by accident during some sort of prank day. The cerulean-blooded troll just had to cause trouble at every turn.
Gamzee immediately goes to sit with his redrom Tavros, who's in the middle of the bus, smiling as the clown troll approachs him with a happy honk. Sollux sits with Aradia, who's near the back, listening to her music device, probably some sort of dark lullaby knowing her. This leaving Karkat, Terezi, and Kanaya to sit with each other. Kanaya however, begins typing up more things the moment they sit down. Her husktop is blinking a lot, and the purple color was off from Feferi's, which's one of the first suspicions Karkat has.
"Who the hell are you pestering because I know it isn't Feferi," Karkat finally snaps after he heard a rather girly giggle from the normally serious troll. Kanaya blushes and looks at him, her bright eye's looking rather happily at the computer screen then back to his face as she types a response without looking down.
"Just one of those...humans we met the other day, a rather charming girl named Rose to be exact." The blush had begun to fade, but there's still a small smile quivering on the corners of her black/green lips.
"Why, the ever-loving hell, are you talking to those pieces of rubbish?!" Karkat snaps, glaring at the husktop screen as if the human would climb out of it and try to strangle him in a fit of rage.
"This one isn't rubbish! She is actually quite intelligent and charming," Kanaya said defensibly, unconsciously reaching for the tube of lipstick in her pocket. Karkat notices this subtle movement and his mouth hardens into a thin line.
"Oh. OH HELL NO! YOU'RE RED FOR HER AREN'T YOU! NOTHING GOOD WILL COME OF THIS KANAYA! !" Karkat yells at her, causing some heads to turn their way, including the bus driver as he growls some harsh things in their way. A green blush spread across Kanaya's cheeks once again.
"I-I am not, flushed or red for her, s-she's just charming to talk to!" she protested, but the romance expert could tell that she's totally head over claws for the human.
"Oh fuck, this is fucking batshit nook-sucking grub rubbish! You can't consort with them Kanaya! It's bad!" Karkat continues ranting, trying to dissuade her in his own cruel and heartless way.
"KK, shut the fuck up," Sollux snaps, slapping Karkats arm. Said troll gives him a dark glare, then starting to yell at Kanaya some more. Sollux snorts in annoyance and grabbed his ear-buds, plugging them into his husktop and listening to a link that one of the humans sent him. This human wasn't all that bad, he sure had some sick beats, that's all Sollux was admitting to. At least this human boy knew it's way around advanced technology. The yellow blood tuned out the rant for the rest of the bus drive, feeling sorry for the poor saps who has to listen to the rant.
After ten more moments of deadly driving, the bus shudders to a stop in front of their building of doom, the troll high-school. The dark gray building is as foreboding as it was their first sweeps there and the large crowd of trolls streaming from various buses and other vehicles don't seem to help the lovely vision. The trolls could already see the cliques forming, and oh look, a rustblooded troll with a bloody nose, how normal for the first day.
"OK you lot get the hell off of my bus before I throw you out," the burly driver growls to them, his tall pointed horns brushing the ceiling as he stands up. All of them quickly abscond, not wanting to get kicked off for good as the low blood always threatens. He's quite menacing, except to those such has Gamzee, who don't care. As they climb out of their bus their group begins to merge with the crowd of students streaming into the entrance of the school
The voices of trolls drowns out all other thoughts as they walk through the rather wide hallways to go get their locker numbers from the adult trolls giving them out in the gym. Lucky for them, Sollux had sent them that information as well, along with the combination. Sollux had sent the information to all of their other friends as well.
They all find out that not only are they in the majority of same classes, but their lockers are near each other as well. Even though they're in different 'grades', they're all grouped together by the weird process of sorting being used by the principal. They're in a strategic place as well in the five floored, u-shaped building, they're on the 2nd floor, right along the curve of the U. The first and 2nd floors are mostly dedicated to lockers, because this's the only school in a 200mile vicinity, meaning a large amount of trolls came to this educational facility.
However, the mentoring system is rather strange, the trolls aren't separated by grade, they're randomly placed into classrooms with others, and the mentors have to then sort the trolls into their grades and hand out specific assignments for each, although it kind of depends on which class they're in. Such as Strife!, it doen't require grade separation, same with the Creative Arts classes. Karkat's pondering over all of this as he unlocks his locker, lockers set into the walls are ridiculously childish for the trolls of their age, and are ridiculously small for the amount of materials needed to go into them. He growls things as he attempts stuffing all of his belongings into the metal box of smallness.
Sollux's locker is beside his and he chuckles at his friends' complaints, even as he struggles with his own locker. He does agree that these lockers are rather small, but there's a great many amount of trolls and sometimes they don't even receive lockers, they're lucky enough to have them. Sollux sees the eleven others lined down the wall, also struggling with their own bell rings and they all began rushing around, since their first classes are sort of separate from each other, and it takes an extremely long time to get to each one, due to the locations.
Karkat has to run to the fourth floor for Creative Writing, while Sollux, Kanaya, Aradia, and Gamzee have to go to the third floor for Advanced Science. Tavros, Nepeta, Terezi, Vriska, and Feferi had to run to the fifth floor for Advanced Language. Eridan and Equius has a class on the fourth floor (Mechanics) as well, only on the opposite side of the building. After they all manage to shove their things into their lockers, they shout goodbyes to each other and take off, navigating through the crowds to get to their respective classes. The other students are also rushing around madly, especially the younger trolls, as they don't know where to go.
Karkat has to shove quite a few ignorant (aka tall) trolls out of his way so he can get to a shortcut he'd discovered in his early years of attending the school: through the janitors stairs (luckily not running into along the way, they're really mean.) He makes it into the classroom just as second bell rings, meaning he has two minutes to spare, but he doesn't regret shoving those trolls, it helped to vent his frustration.
He slides into the classroom and digd in his heels to skid to a stop, then quickly navigating through the scattered desks to the 10th grade section and sitting in the furthest desk from the teacher. It's always a god thing to be out of sight, especially in his case. He rather enjoys defying them and watching their reactions, even though it usually earns him about two hours total in after school detention. These thoughts run through his mind as he glances around the classroom, finally looking at the front of it and kind of jumping a bit in surprise.
Two trolls standing at the front of the classrooms, arms crossed behind their backs, jerked their gazes simultaneously away from him. The both of them instead opt for staring at the back wall, and Karkat realizes that they must be the new students. Which is obviously why they aren't claiming the good desks why they still can.
Their expressions become a mixture of blank and pissed off, and Karkat doesn't hide his curiosity as he stares at them.
A male and female by immediate appearance, although Karkat knows appearances can be deceiving, both wearing a t-shirt (black for the male, white for the female) that has their symbol in mirroring colours. Karkat narrows his eyes at the symbol, a circle with a line through it, weird.
He focuses on the guy first, noting at first appearance that he's only a few inches taller than him, but with different stature. More thin with lithe muscles and long legs that would make Strife with him interesting. What wouldn't help in Strife, is the shaggy black hair, flashing white under certain light, that shadows his eyes, covering the tips of the trolls' pointed ears.
Through the shadow, Karkat can see that the new guy's eyes are light grey, only standing out because of the yellow around the iris. It almost makes him look...dead. Karkat had seen stranger eyes, like with his friend Sollux, and even his own that are beginning to show his own mutant traits, but it still struck him as odd. The boys angled features showcase a lighter grey skin than most trolls, with sprinkles of even lighter coloured freckles on his nose and cheeks.
The most odd thing that sticks out for Karkat is the scar that cuts through the right side of the new guys mouth, ending a few centimeters above his chin and beginning a bit away from the side of his angled nose. It's white, meaning it was inflicted awhile ago, and it's a few centimeters wide. Scars aren't odd, with their caste ridden society, but the placement of it is, and the fact that it was inflicted with a blunt weapon.
With the black shirt/white symbol combination he's wearing baggy black cargo pants with pockets mostly empty, and white and black hiking boots, obviously well worn.
Karkat notices that the troll keeps glancing over at him, but he just steadily matches his gaze when he does, better than making it seem like he's flirting or some shit. Every time their gazes meet the new troll hurriedly looks away, but always sending a quick glance to the girl standing beside him.
Deciding that he'd judged the guy enough, Karkat turns to the girl stoically standing next to him.
She's noticeably taller than the troll next to her, rivaling Sollux's new height if Karkat had to guess. Her hair is long, like many troll girls, and cascades in waves to her lower back. When catching the light, it almost as a blue sheen, before returning to its dark black. Her bangs also shadow her features, making Karkat wonder on how well each of them could fight with their hair obscuring their vision like that. She brushes her hair behind her ear as he thinks this, showing off her pointed ears.
Her eyes are dark grey, nearly black in comparison to the guy next to her. All of her features are pretty similar, except her nose is smaller and more button-like, and her skin is a slightly darker grey, with without the freckles sprinkled across them. Marring her left eye is two scars that split through her eyebrow to a jagged end underneath her eye. She obviously doesn't have any problems seeing out of that eye though.
Also like most troll girls, her shirt is tight fitting, the white shirt a stark difference to the usual black. Hers, surprisingly, doesn't feature a symbol as he earlier thought. She's wearing tight fitting jeans as well, a holster of sorts strapped to her upper thigh.
Another brush of her hair makes him glance to her horns, glancing between the two trolls and seeing that they essentially had the same shape, besides a few minor differences.
They both begin a few inches above their ears, angling towards the back of their heads. The girl's then curves forward and stops, forming a barb on the left side and a hook on the other. The guy's horns curves upward, the one on his right stopping with a nubby top, the other with a sharp point. Similar, and yet different, Karkat notes, pondering on the two strange trolls appearances.
Final bell rings shrilly, causing last minute trolls and others that were talking to scramble into their chairs. The male troll snaps to a stoic glare like the troll beside him, both staring blankly at the back wall. The two of them seem almost focused on something else, like they're having an internal conversation with someone, maybe each other. The door slams shut as the mentor stalks in, waiting for it to click before turning to the students and beginning her yearly lecture. Karkat hunkers down in his seat, he had this mentor a few sweeps ago so he knows what to expect.
"Alright you useless bags of grub-shit, this is your "creative writing class" don't disrespect the rules of the classroom and we can just get on with our pleasant lives." She announces, glaring at all of us. The newer trolls stare at her wide mouthed at her free use of language, but that doesn't even faze the older trolls, who just chuckle. She looks at the ones in tenth grade section and continues.
"So, I know all of you know everything about this school et cetera, but these are two new students," The female mentor turns to the two of them, "Who've traveled here for some inexplicable reason, introduce yourselves to this wonderful, class," She says sarcastically, making extravagant arm motions. The girl steps forward first, and Karkat begins to suspect that the two trolls might have telepathic abilities, the way the two of them have a conversation in a single glance.
"I'm Socuih," (Sew-Q-A) Her light and airy voice has a razor-sharp undertone, making a few of the weaker of the trolls cower as she passes her dark gaze over their heads.
The guy takes a smaller step forward, glaring, "Xyon," is his short reply. His voice kind of shocked Karkat, it was deeper than he expected, but not shockingly so. And he isn't surprised to hear a few sighs echo through the room, from guys and girls alike.
Karkat snorts, hearing their mentor mutter something about idiotic teens before pointing at him. He doesn't show his surprise at the action, instead settling his expression into a scowl.
"Go sit in the desks beside Vantas," She instructs, giving Karkat a glare. Glancing to the side, he sees that the only two unoccupied desks are right beside him. He sighs internally and turns to the front, looking pointedly at the two students beside her that had yet to move.
"Well go on!" She snaps, shoving the one closest to her, Xyon, forward. Socuih is the one to shoot a glare at the mentor, stalking in front of Xyon and taking the desk in front of the other empty one. Xyon took the desk level with his own with a small noise of annoyance.
The mentor stared at the two of them for a few more seconds before beginning her lecture on the intro to writing. Karkat sinks down in his seat and glances at the new trolls out of the corner of his eyes. He was almost shocked that he doesn't feel his trademark annoyance when looking at them, maybe it's because they've never annoyed him. Of course, that could change quickly.
He absently taps the eraser to his writing utensil against the edge of his desk, absently humming a melody. The greenblooded mentor could go on forever, he already knew that much from the previous years of having her as an instructor. He glances over at the trolls again and almost turns his head totally, barely stopping himself when he see's that Socuih has her head laid down on top of her crossed arms, clearly asleep.
Another glance at Xyon reveals that he's more subtle in the 'sleeping in class' action, he's slouched in his desk, chin pressed against his chest and arms crossed in his lap. Realizing the two of them are completely out, he turns his head to see them better. Maybe they're not completely asleep, Socuih keeps muttering underneath her breath, and he can see that Xyon's eyelashes are flickering, like he's looking around or something.
Karkat decided to observe Xyon, he didn't feel like trying to explain why he was staring at Socuih if she woke up. He smirks at the ideas of possible excuses.
As he thinks that, Xyon shifts, slouching further down in his seat and allowing his head fall more to the side. As he did this, Karkat was able to get a glimpse of some sort of white marking just underneath the collar of his black shirt. The mark stood out against the grey color of his skin, but even so Karkat couldn't quite tell what it is.
He looked over at Socuih, just as she shifts, turning her head away from him. For once he was getting some good breaks today, but he can see a small spot of black just above the now lower collar of her shirt.
It isn't odd for trolls to have tattoos or markings, but most of the time only higher bloods get them, and even then they're the colours of their blood caste. It seems that they prefer the opposite colours of the spectrum, which is strange enough, but to have what appears to be tattoos? Even stranger.
He looks closer trying to decipher what the marking was, but glancing around the room first to see that every other troll is doing anything other than paying attention to the lecture or the trolls in the back of the room. He flinches back slightly when Xyon jerks forward, eyes flashing open as he catches himself on the edge of the desk in front of him.
Karkat starts to look away before realizing that that would be even more suspicious because Xyon could've already realized that he was staring at him. Thinking quickly, he leans closer to the new troll.
"Dude this is a good class to sleep in but not if you get us all caught!" He hisses, glaring directly into Xyon's light grey eyes. Xyon seems to stop himself from glaring, looking away.
"Sorry, I'll remember that," Xyon mutters, brushing his hair out of his eyes, only for it to fall immediately back into place.
Karkat doesn't bother replying, instead leaning back and glancing at the clock, standing up a second before the bell rings and absconding out the door before he could get stuck behind a group of slow walking people at the door. Dodging around the other trolls that begin streaming into the hallway, he makes his way to the janitors stairs, listening for any signs of the custodians as he makes his way down.
Halfway down the flight he hears the door open above him, causing a curse to fly from his lips as he hears the voices of two trolls reach his ears. He begins taking the stairs two or three at a time, nimbly leaping over the railings until he can no longer hear the two new trolls that had apparently followed him. He makes his way to his locker, being greeted by Aradia and Sollux once he gets there.
"Hey were those new trolls in your class? Since Feferi is in her private tutoring we haven't been able to talk to her yet." Aradia asks as she shuts her locker, holding only a notebook and red pen.
"Yeah, you'll just have to see their weirdness for yourself because just wow," Karkat replies, holding only a writing utensil, none of them usually bring alot of materials with them.
Walking into the classroom, they find Terezi, Vriska, and Kanaya casually saving desks for the rest of their group, a good thing because the second bell had already rung so most of the seats are taken. Karkat shoves a pencil pouch off his desk and sits down. Vriska growls and picks it up, also grabbing the math book on Sollux's desk and the hair clip Aradia was examining.
"'Whoa! thank's so much for saving us seats girls, you're so awesome!'" She said in a mock high pitch voice, glaring at them. Karkat turns to Kanaya.
"Yes thank you so much Kanaya for saving us desks," he says with a smirk. Vriska smacks the back of his head, then walks to her own desk. The rest of their friends gradually file in, even Feferi and Eridan, claiming their desks as final bell rings before one more pair step through the doorway, just before they would be counted late.
A certain pair of trolls who had a thing for black and white.