Chapter 2: Your name is…

Your name is Terezi. You don't remember your last name yet, but you believe you will. You have just built a house, if such an optimistic word can be applied to a box of dirt with a door in it. Tavros helped a good deal, especially once you figured out how to use the matter manipulator, and got a pickaxe. The dirt smells okay, you guess, albeit kind of sour, and a little bitter. The trees are better. You're assuming they're trees, even though they have massive thornsand very few branches. They're a rich bluish purple, which smells exceptionally sweet. They're hard to avoid, too, since there are so many. You appear to be in a forest. You like this place. (Maybe you've had experience with forests before?)

Tavros walks around the corner of the house, carrying an axe. One of the monsters that tried to attack the two of you follows him, docile and friendly. He tosses you some of the wood he got. Apparently, the trees do work as far as wood goes.

The others suddenly appear, suddenly appearing out of a clear sky. Most of them are carrying a weapon. You notice that a few, namely Vriska, Equius, and Sollux, are not. Of those carrying something, a few strike you as a bit off, Eridan's bow and arrows, for a start, or Kanaya's machete thing. A lot of them seem to fit though, like Feferi's double trident.

Karkat seems very pleased with himself. You guess that he has taken control. He looks at the house with a blank look, and then seems to put it from his mind.

"Terezi, pass me the thing," he says.

"Which thing?" you say, smiling infuriatingly. At least, it makes Karkat angry.

"You know perfectly well which thing," he says, then, decides to clarify in case you try anything else, which you were planning on, "the stuff pusher, or whatever it's called."

"Would that be the matter manipulator?" you say, pulling it out.

"YES!" he says, in the way someone might say "FINALLY!", then more evenly, "That is exactly what I was talking about, pass it over," then, grudgingly, "Please."

Well, how can you resist that demeanor that is so, what's the word? (Adorabloodthirsty, definitely) Anyway, you toss the thing over.

Karkat takes it, and turns around to the bunch of trolls. "I don't care what you call this," he yells, "the important part is that I left it with Terezi earlier so she could find out what it does." He looks at you and tosses the thing back. "Which is what?"

Well, he never asked you to find out, but whatever, you know what it does. "It can break things," you say, "and it can put things down. It's really pretty obvious."

Karkat steps back up. "More importantly, we have a job to do. We have to survive. So, our first job is to make shelter, and then to get food." He begins shouting instructions, telling one person to do this and another to do that.

This might take a while.

You are now Gamzee

Nevermind, you don't want to be Gamzee; the guy's head is like a bag of some small furry animal. Suffice to say he's not feeling well.

You are instead Eridan.

You are angry, perhaps even furious. Vriska was totally into your power struggle thing up there, and you were gunning for being the team-captain, or whatever the term is, which is obviously what should happen since you are nearly the highest blood-color here, besides Feferi, who, well. You came up against that earlier, which was why you didn't bring it up. (Blood colors? What are you even thinking about?) And then Karkat just had to teleport up and start yelling, and you got completely forgotten, which is stupid, because you matter, and to hell with anyone who thinks otherwise.

In which case, to hell with Karkat, you have a bow, and you're itching to try it. You may not even come back, you think. (You wouldn't, except, these are the only people you know. That's enough of a reason in and of itself.)

You are still Eridan, later that day. You have just killed a lot of wild animals, and collected their meat, which is assuaging the fear you were having of going back and looking like you're being lazy. It also makes you feel better than if they didn't drop anything, and just seemed to disintegrate, (like they have anyway), without leaving anything.

You realize it's getting cold, and return to your landing site, carrying all the meat you acquired over the course of the day. As you get near, you see a fire, burning in the middle of a ring of what appear to be houses of the same design as what you saw when you first came down. They're nothing more than boxes, with doors.

Standing by the fire, on a small mound of dirt, is Karkat, who is yelling instructions at the others. They keep arguing, and don't seem to worry about what he thinks, until he yells at them, anyway.Really, though, everything's functioning.

Karkat notices you. He walks over to you. He says, in a voice which can only be described as a snarl, "Where the hell were you? We need all hands on deck."

You roll your eyes, but otherwise do your best to ignore what you're certain is a joke about you. (You don't even know why, but whatever) Still, he's given you a perfect opening to excuse your absence.

"I wwas out huntin'," you say, "Not that I'd expect you to care."

"Oh really?" He says, "Did you find anything edible?"

"Plenty," you say, as if you don't care. "More'n you could go through in a feww days, at least."

Then he says, suddenly angry, or at least angrier, "Then how is it that we haven't been able to get any, we've killed whole herds of these little fire-spewing things," (Yeah, you killed huge numbers of them, you would guess they're the indigenous life of the planet.)and we've barely gotten anything at all. Why is it that you are the only person who can get anythinguseful?!" By the end of this he's grabbing you by the collar.

You honestly have no idea why you got meat and he didn't. You swat his hands off of you, and say, "Howw the hell should I knoww?! Been wweighin' on your mind, has it?"

"Yeah, I guess there's something about the possibility of everyone dying of starvation that makes it hard to not think about- OF COURSE IT HAS BEEN! Get cooking." When you hesitate, he shouts, "GET TO WORK!" and turns away, shaking his head, muttering to himself.

Despite your numerous minor injuries, you get to work, telling yourself that if it comes to it, you can blame him for not asking if you were injured. Behind you, you hear Karkat yelling at someone to make an extra house. Apparently, they didn't think it was worthwhile to make one for someone who wasn't there.

Finally, as the sun is going down, and things are getting too dark to see, Karkat finally says, voice hoarse from yelling, that you can go to sleep. You don't pay attention, as you're too busy heading to the thing that you won't call a house, but if you had stayed up, you would have seen that a goodly portion were staying up for a bit, for one reason or another. Like Equius who barely stays out for a half minute, or Nepeta, who has apparently been itching to try out those claws all day. Kanaya apparently doesn't feel tired. The list goes on, but you miss all of it, because you just felt like staggering in, and collapsing on the wooden framework, which has only the barest padding.

You are now Gamzee.

A lone troll sits in a cave. He can't sleep, despite being bone tired. He can't eat, despite being starving. He is cold, but has no way to warm himself. He is miserable, but for some reason, he isn't dead.

You are him.

"I know you're there," he says, chuckling hysterically. "Really, there never was a time you weren't there, I was just too blind to notice." His laughing picks up, "I can hear you now, copying me, talking about me." He is no longer laughing, but talking quietly, as if coming to a realization, "but I don't need you here, I can do whatever I want." He sits in silen- "SO GET OUT!"

You are now nobody, empty space, there is literally nobody you can be. You skip to morning.

You can be anyone… Well, almost anyone- Well, almost anyone who is awake- Okay, fine, you can only be Aradia right now.

You are now Aradia.

You are the first one awake. You walk outside, straight into a group of large hairy creatures. You wonder whether they are docile or hostile, until one charges straight at you. You pick it up and slam it into the ground until it vanishes, leaving behind little golden cubes.

After you do the same to a few of the others, the ones that are left run off, and you are standing alone in the middle of camp. Well, that was odd. You didn't even realize you were telekinetic until just then, but using that kind of ability certainly feels normal to you. You wonder what else it can do.

Well, for one thing, you can feel the shape of things around you. That doesn't really help you, because you can't go much further than you can see, at least, further than you can see with all these trees around. Unless…

You search the ground below you, and find a wealth of important knowledge about the planet you are on; you find its layers of soil and its rocks and small pockets of air. You also find copper, iron, coal, and a few pieces of silver, and you would be willing to guess that there's more below the layer of plant matter, in the bedrock. Locating one of the largest deposits, you begin to pull out neat blocks of dirt, and put them beside the newly created hole. In a remarkably short time you have acquired a good deal of ore. You also make a furnace. How you're doing this, you have no idea, but it's working.

Not long after, people start waking up. First awake is Karkat, looking like he might collapse any second. He doesn't, though, and when you tell him what you're doing, he grumbles at you to mine out the rest of the ore in camp. He's not angry, you don't think; he's just doesn't like getting up early.

The rest get up at various times, a few like Karkat, clearly tired, a few less so. Kanaya, for instance, apparently didn't sleep at all.

Not to be outdone is Vriska, who walks out later, near last, actually. The moment she steps outside something slams into the ground at her feet, and then another, and another. After a half minute, maybe, and she leans down and picks them up. After a second of considering them, she throws them in the air, confirming what you thought. They're dice. You also think that Vriska was facing you when she threw them in the air; probably not intentionally, your furnace is in the middle of the clearing. Still, you think those dice are for more than just playing games with. You know, instinctively or not, that they are dangerous.

The dice land. You don't see what the roll was, because they're too small, but you do see something flicker into existence, flying at your throat. You also see it stop, in midair, and then burn away.

That was either the clumsiest assassination attempt you've ever been part of, or an accident. You're inclined to go with the latter, as there wasn't really a way for Vriska to know what the dice did, well, maybe, anyway.

Whatever the case, she wasn't nearly fast enough; you felt like you had all the time in the world, like you were made of time! You can't help but find that funny, and then you realize why it is funny. You were maid of time.

The title reverberates through your head, and you get slapped across the face with a bunch of your old memories.

While you were standing there, having an epiphany for all of 2 seconds, Karkat walked over to Vriska and began yelling at her. She's arguing back, of course, taking the tack that since she didn't mean harm, and no harm came of it, she's done nothing wrong. You sit back and watch the fireworks.

You are now Karkat.

"THAT IS NOT THE POINT!" you continue, "Just because she's alive doesn't mean you didn't put her in danger! Just keep those dice locked up unless there is an actual enemy around! That's it, it's that simple!"

"Fine, I'll be very careful," she says, and the way she says it tells you that she's not taking it seriously, but at least if she tries this again, you have witnesses that she's done this before.

Grumbling, you turn to the crowd of trolls. Everyone's here. Good, that means you can get started. "First: the good news, we're all alive, and we have food," you begin. You pull out some of the cooked meat from last night. "Of course, our source of food is uncertain, until we can grow our own, or find a reliable way to get the stuff from animals," you continue, "this isn't even mentioning the fact that our resident idiot clown has gone missing." You stayed up last night planning, and you could never figure out what to do about Gamzee. "However," you say, "We will get him back. For that, though, we need someone to go after him, and I have decided to handle this personally." You look around, daring them to object. Someone does, oddly.

"Um, how are you going to find him?" You've barely heard Nepeta talk before this, so it comes as kind of a surprise that she's speaking up now.

"I don't know, but I don't intend to just sit here and hope he comes back," you say, "do you have a better idea?"

"He went that way," says Nepeta, pointing in an apparently random direction, "I don't know where he went from there, I didn't go that far out."

"And how do you know that?" you say.

"He didn't make any effort to hide his tracks," she says, "I'll show you if you want."

"…Fine." You say. "Later."

"Anyway; Kanaya and Aradia, you two are going exploring. Find a hill or something, scout out the surrounding area, and mine for more stuff." Thinking about it, you realize that you don't want Vriska staying here, because you're certain that if you leave her here, she'll take over and kill you on sight. "Vriska, you go with them."

As an afterthought you add, "Feel free to loot anyone you come across." Just in case, of course, but you could use a leg up as far as survival goes.

To the rest of them, you say, "If you're not leaving, you're staying here and working around the camp. Make somewhere better than boxes to live in, plant something, figure out what's with animals that makes it near-impossible to get anything edible, I don't care, just make it better when we get back than when we left. That is all, any questions?" Once again, you didn't expect a response, but someone still responds.

"Far be it from me to object," says Equius in the low rumble that is his voice, "but the high-… Gamzee left looking rather odd, perhaps unstable. Are you certain that you can handle him alone in his current state?"

You somehow doubt that that'll be a problem, but, something about his tone makes you uncertain. "Are you offering to come along?" you ask, "Because, if so, you are. In fact, you know what? I am ordering you to come after Gamzee right now, at this time, and I will hear no argument against it."

He looks taken aback at that, but just says "Yes," as if that's even a proper response. You fear you've made a horrible mistake.

That's everyone sorted out, about as well as you can do. Still, you have a few things left to figure out; who to leave in charge, for instance. You honestly aren't sure about Eridan. Feferi might work, but who knows how her apparent friendship with Eridan might affect things, so you might end up with the same problem. Sollux is, well, not fit for the job really. He's way too angry about stupid things, and some gut instinct tells you that you can't count on his reactions being logical like yours. You aren't even sure Nepeta's staying here. Tavros is flat out unconscionable. That leaves Terezi. Well, she did follow you down quickly, and she's certainly no idiot. Terezi it is, then.

You quickly tell her that she's in charge, and, while she's obviously not thrilled, she accepts. You get food for the exploration team, and for yourself. Finally, you head over to Nepeta, and tell her to point you towards Gamzee.

"Well," she begins, "He obviously started here, since this is where everyone landed." Makes sense, "and there's a trail heading that way, and none of us headed that way," what trail?

"Wait, what are you talking about, since when is there a trail there?" You interject.

"You can't tell?" she says, pointing at an apparently blank section of ground. You don't, but whatever. "He was right here."

"There's nothing there," you say. "I'm starting to think you're making this up."

Nepeta stands up, takes a step back, and says, her voice like the crack of a whip, "Listen! Just because you haven't had sweeps of experience tracking prey doesn't mean I haven't," she says.

"What are you talking about?" you ask. Even as you ask, you get the feeling she's right.

She doesn't even hesitate. "I don't know. Does it matter?"

"Yes, I can't help but agree," comes Equius' voice from behind you. (How is someone that massive so quiet?)

You spin around. Equius is just sort of standing there, visible eye and the area below it tinted with blue. Has he just been standing there the whole time, watching?

(Hell with it) You sigh "Fine, we'll take your path, Nepeta." You steel yourself for the next bit, "And… I can't track Gamzee alone, so I'm going to need you to come along."

She just smiles, anger apparently forgotten.

You get walking.

You are now Vriska.

You are busy, planning, scheming. Whatever you do, you're going to want to be held in high regard before you try it, and taking credit for any loot you find is going to be the first step, or perhaps letting the others have some credit will make the others regard you as a good person. Better yet, make it obvious that you got it, but are just being humble. Whatever you do, though, you can't fade into the background. As you scheme, you're grabbing whatever you can. After a few minutes, you're ready to go. You walk outside.

Minutes in the future, though only a few:

You are now Sollux.

You asked for a few minutes before you got to work, because you had an idea. You've felt something missing, besides your memories. You saw Aradia excavating with psychic power. It reminds you of something you used to do, as much as you remember anything.

Now, things are flying around you like a storm. You can't keep yourself from laughing, in what most people would call a cackle.

Slowly, you become aware of Terezi standing in front of your cloud of 'p2iioniic energy' simply standing there, waiting for you to calm down. After a bit, you realize that you should probably stop with the light show. Even as you think this, bits of the storm shred off like fabric and dissipate into the air. Eventually, it's just you standing there. For a second you stand there, grinning like a madman, and then you collapse.

After a time, you realize that you are sitting in utter calm. Even as you realize this, the calm breaks, and you sit bolt upright. You are lying, or sitting, currently, in one of those things you were sleeping in. You see Feferi sitting off to your side, in a simple chair. You smile.

"Hey, FF," you say.

"Hi," she says, with a smile.

Your name is Sollux Captor, and you suddenly understand everything

"The waking world is not that of the dreamer. Those awake see the object, those asleep know its nature" - Saying found on a cave wall on Alternia