Kanaya(diamonds)Karkat: Remember when Kanaya didn't turn into a rainbow drinker after Eridan shot her through?
He found her too late. Hole in her stomach and eyes wide with surprise, Kanaya was clearly dead. Oh God, he thought, stomach churning with horror. Bile rose to the back of his throat and he turned and vomited on the floor. "Oh God," he croaked. Over in the corner lay Feferi (also dead), and a barely breathing Sollux was over there lying on top of shattered monitors. "Kanaya," he whimpered, reaching for her but pulling back before he could pap at her face.
She wasn't moving, wasn't breathing, and she was – she was dead! Someone killed her. Who killed her? His moirail was dead and someone killed her. With rage boiling like fire through his veins, he turned toward the door and snarled. Someone had killed her and he would have his revenge.
As Karkat geared up, checking his inventory for weapons and donning his toughest sweater, bandaging his knuckles in case things devolved into a literal fistfight, he allowed his rage to grow. All that fear he experienced growing up on Alternia, wrong and marked for death, he let turn into rage.
All he saw was red, and well if his suspicions were right soon enough he'd be seeing some shades of purple. He remembered to drag Sollux into some out of the way corner, locked him in to keep him safe, and then disappeared into the vents. He wasn't going to give Kanaya's murderer time to see him coming.
The vents were filthy, the dust and grime turning his jade covered hands a filthy looking brown. It only served to fuel his ire though, and he swore again that whoever had done this thing would die a horrible, agonizing death. He was going to disembowel them, and choke them with their own entrails, and they were going to deserve every minute of it.
There was a reason that you never killed a troll's moirail, after all.
He crawled through the vents for hours, following different pathways and tracking down each of his friends. Tavros he found dead at the bottom of the stairs, killed by his own lance, Vriska had been stabbed through the chest…Nepeta and Equius lay dead side by side, and he had seemingly lost the ability to care. He felt the sadness at their deaths of course; he had been their leader. But he was also hatred and fury incarnate, and there was no room for softer emotions in him.
He found Eridan on the roof, facing down Terezi and Gamzee. And when he arrived, the dynamic changed. With the wild looks in the others' eyes, it was clear that Terezi was the only sane troll left. She couldn't smell that however, and no one was willing to back down from the quadruple staring contest to give her the opportunity to find it out.
Until Karkat spotted the jade splattering Eridan's violet cape, which was when the whole thing devolved into hell. Sickle swinging, blade reflecting the poor lighting, and Karkat's feral screaming shattered the uneasy peace. At that moment, Gamzee and Terezi lunged forward even as Eridan grabbed for his wand.
The battle was short and fierce and in the end all four of the combatants were sporting major injuries, if they weren't outright dead. Gamzee had Terezi's cane-sword shoved through his jugular, and had major stab wounds seeping purple in the vicinity of his major organs. Terezi herself had a shattered arm, and missing teeth. But she was alive where her opponent was not.
Eridan was dead, Karkat's sickle having cleaved him in half after severing his wand arm. But Karkat had suffered as well, and Eridan's only shot had been well placed. His red blood pulsed out of a hole in his upper shoulder, even as Terezi fought to stem the bleeding. She was fighting a losing battle, and they both knew it. Karkat stared out over Terezi's shoulder, thought he saw a flicker of red wings…and died.
