The class had returned to regular activity, but Mr. Fenton was waiting outside the bathroom door for Karkat to return.
"Are you alright?" the teacher asked, looking concerned.
"I'm fucking fine."
"Language, Mr. Vantas. Now, I don't know what happened in there, but I need to send you down to the counselor's office. I don't think you're mentally ready to continue class at the moment." Karkat grunted, and Mr. Fenton handed him a small slip of pink paper. "You know where the office is, right? Tell the secretary you've been sent to speak with Mrs. Hamilton."
Wordlessly, Karkat snatched the slip from his teacher's hand and made his way to the front office of the high school. A crew was working between the portables and the building to repair the damage done by yesterday's villain attack.
The school secretary barely turned away from her telephone to see Karkat's note. She wordlessly pointed at a door bearing several college posters in the back of the office, and Karkat nervously pushed open the door.
"Good afternoon, Mr…"
"Karkat. Karkat Vantas," Karkat answered. "I, uh…I was sent down here by Mr. Fenton?"
"Ah, yes, he called about you! Now, sit yourself down and take a look at my painting! Do you see the way the paint overlaps?"
"This is one of those dumb-as-fuck tests where you ask me what I see in the paint blob, isn't it? Well, do you know what I see? I see a goddamned grubfucking paint glob. Don't try to psychoanalyze me." Mrs. Hamilton laughed, to Karkat's chagrin.
"No, no, no, I just wanted to show you the picture! Please watch your language, though, we are in a school and that sort of thing just isn't acceptable."
The entire rest of Karkat's meeting with Mrs. Hamilton continued along that exact vein. She asked Karkat about his home life, his father, and whether or not he had nightmares frequently. He couldn't wait to get the fuck out.
The remainder of Karkat's day passed in monotony and when he finally made it home he slumped into the bright red beanbag chair in front of the TV without even stopping to drop his backpack.
"Rough day?" Jack mumbled from where he was collapsed on the couch behind Karkat.
"You have no fucking clue."
Karkat opened his mouth to start telling his father about the incident in Physics, but then he hesitated. It was obvious that Jack knew about Karkat's powers—why else would he have given Karkat the power-blocking gloves?—but the way Jack had kept the truth away burned at Karkat's insides and pissed him off even more than John's exploding cupcake trick at lunch that afternoon. But still…
"Hey. Dad." The accusatory tone of Karkat's voice combined with his use of the word Dad rather than simply Jack made Karkat's father sit up on the couch and meet his son's angry scarlet gaze as Karkat stood up. "Is there something you'd like to tell me?" Karkat ripped off the red gloves and felt himself change into the hero form, as he'd begun to think of it. This time, the change was easy and painless—just weird.
Jack's gaze focused suddenly, and he lurched to his feet.
"I think it's about time you learned about your brother," he finally said, after meeting Karkat's eyes for a long, long moment.
Jack ushered Karkat to the wooden table in the kitchen and took a seat, gesturing for Karkat to do so as well. He drummed his fingers on the old, scratched finish slowly.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Karkat suddenly demanded. "What brother?"
"See, and that's where I fucked up. Before I met your mum, God bless her soul, before she brought me to my senses…there was another dame, name o' Regina Nera. She was…well, we met through my old occupation. She was a rival, workin' for an enemy of my boss, and we were the best of enemies. Young hate burns bright, y'know? But one night, I was drunk out of my mind and she was thinkin' God knows what, and we had sex. One o' the best nights a' my life, but I digress. And she got herself preggers, and I got saddled with the kid. We named him Kankri, after my granddad."
"Wait, what? You knew Bella Regina? As in, the Bella Regina? The self-titled Queen of Crime, the one who vanished?" Karkat leaned forward in his seat out of shock, his nails (claws) digging into the table. Oops. He'd forgotten he was still in hero form.
"Shaddup and listen. So like I said, I raised Kankri. Regina didn't want him. And soon after he started school, 'round his ninth birthday, shit started…happenin'. And it kept happenin'. It was weird shit, he started seein' things, some kind a'…other world bullshit. And I believed him." Jack got up slowly from the table, fetched himself a beer from the refrigerator, opened it, and took a long swig. "Once he got to fifth grade, the powers started showin' up. We first found out about it at the playground after school. Kid sassed the school bully, somethin' about finding his body odor 'triggering,' and he got himself a knuckle sandwich to the nose. There was blood everywhere—but just as I got there, ready to take him to the hospital, somethin' freaky happened. The blood…it just kind of came back up. It went right back into his body." Jack took another draught of his beer.
"He had powers?"
"Obviously. And they kept gettin' stronger, and I don't think even he knew all a' what he could do." Jack sighed and leaned back in his chair, chugging the rest of his drink before slumping forward, the legs of the chair slamming into the tile.
"And…something happened. What the fuck happened, Jack?" Karkat demanded loudly.
"Well…after Regina had the kid, she ditched the both of us. Disappeared for a while, if ya' will. I heard nothin' from her again 'till Kankri's senior year in high school. He was about to graduate, gonna go to school at Meteor College and do some heroism on the side, when the villain Number Eight came outta nowhere. She was a newbie, a wild card. Started raisin' havoc in the city center, and a' course Kankri wanted to go challenge her. He had a bunch of hero friends who wanted to go with him, and I knew a few of them out of costume, too. And I wouldn't let him fight Eight, and then it happened. One by one, the other heroes went to challenge Number Eight, and one by one, they got killed. All of 'em, even the strongest. And finally it was just Kankri left, and Eight got daring. She knew there was only one hero still alive and she started to track him down."
Jack coughed, and excused himself to fetch yet another beer.
"She went way farther than any supervillain would, could, or should have done. And she managed to track Kankri back to our apartment in one of those old skyrises. And around that same time, I received a very strange letter with no return address. It demanded that I bring Kankri to the Circle Park, leave him there, and move as far away as I could." Jack sighed, pausing as though he was searching for words. "It was signed, Bella Regina."
"You mean…?"
"I ignored the letter, thought it was some kind a' trick. And the next week, she came. I knew her face as soon as I saw it, despite the mask she wore and her new clothing. It was Regina Nera, she was Number Eight, and for whatever strange reason, she wanted Kankri dead." Jack turned his face away, breaking eye contact with Karkat. He stared down at the floor like it was moving beneath his feet. "Before I knew…before I could react…she attacked. Shot Kankri through the heart with a pure white bullet, and…and the blood didn't go back in. She nearly took my eye out with a sharpened cigarette holder, said it was a warning. Then she left. She just…left. It was like she teleported away, and for all I know that might have been exactly what she did."
"So what happened next?" Karkat asked.
"Nothing. I went back to my job, with a little more caution. No one ever saw Regina Nera in the open again, she vanished into the shadows of her organization. Started creatin' a reputation for herself. Things were normal for a while, if normal could ever be used to describe my…occupation. Then came the fight, and my life was saved by the most wonderful woman I've ever known.
"That'd be your mum," Jack added as though Karkat wouldn't have known. "She persuaded me to leave my erstwhile job and settle down near the edge of the city, find a good, honest occupation, and that's what I did. A few years later, we had you, and I knew from the moment I saw those eyes that more likely than not, you'd be just like your brother. Around the same time, they published a study on superhumans sayin' powers develop earlier when the kid's near other kids, so I figured by homeschoolin' you I could keep you safe. We got this far, and nothin', so I assumed—wrongly—that you didn't have the powers. I sent you to school, and you know what happened next."
Karkat sat still, slowly absorbing the new information. He'd heard of the things his father was telling him about, of course. The Hero Massacre of Meteor City was infamous; what kind of villain was strong enough to brutally murder twelve different superbeings in less than four months? It was terrifying to think about. And Number Eight was a legend, the role model for ninety percent of the idiots who tried to become supervillains these days. But to hear that his father, Jack Vantas the bumbling drunk, had been directly involved with it, been the father of one of the heroes—that was unbelievable.
"He looked just like you," Jack said suddenly, breaking the silence to meet Karkat's gaze. "Eyes like rubies, that thick brown hair, I swear you're even the same height as he was when he was your age. He had a bright red sweater that one of his other hero friends gave him, and he wore it all the time. He would pull his pants up nearly to his armpits and it annoyed poor Porrim so much that she knitted the sweater for him to avoid looking at them." Jack sighed, turning his eyes towards empty space. "He was buried wearing it."
There was a long, heavy silence. The air between Karkat and his father felt like a steel wire, tense and taut, broken only by Jack's third walk to the refrigerator as he retrieved another beer.
Then, the doorbell rang. The noise pierced through the aura of the previous conversation like a knife through butter, and Karkat jumped from his seat.
"I'll get the door."
"You've still got your horns out. Go upstairs, I'll get the door."
"Fuck you," replied Karkat, grabbing his red gloves from where he'd left them and throwing them on, wriggling his fingers as the material slid onto his skin. He ran into the hallway, already half-knowing exactly who was standing at the front door.
Sure enough, Sollux Captor was waiting. He carried a backpack from which several colorful wires dangled, and his 3D glasses were absent, showing his yellow irises. For the record, Karkat found them nearly as creepy as his own scarlet eyes.
"You have failed your tetht, KK. You have failed it immenthely."
"The fuck are you talking about?" Karkat demanded.
"You forgot to text me. I wath waiting."
"What, do you have nothing better to do than wait around for a shitstain like me to actually pay attention to your pathetic life?"
"No, I wath jutht a little worried about you. Calm your titth."
"I don't fucking have tits, you writhing shitsmoking asshole. Get the fuck out. And by that I mean stay here or else."
"I will choothe to ignore that thtatement. And you did flip your thit in the bathroom earlier, you know," Sollux answered sarcastically. "Oh—and for your information, I wath texting AA, becauthe I do have better thingth to do than wait around for you."
"Just get the fuck in the house," Karkat groaned. Sollux made his way to the living room and dumped his technology-filled backpack on the couch. He pulled out a white box and a shitton of wires, connecting them to the television in mysterious ways.
"And who is this?" Jack asked, wandering into the room.
"This is Sollux, dad, you met him yesterday. He came by after school, remember?"
"And why the fuck is he here?"
"Long story short?" Karkat asked angrily, but then Sollux interrupted.
"I thaw him go troll and I'm here to be hith unofficial tutor in the wayth of the thuperhuman. Get uthed to it, thith ith only lethon one," the bony kid lisped. "I am the Jedi Mathter and KK ith my padawan. I will train him in the wayth of the Forthe." Jack grunted.
"Which one are you?"
"Pthionic. Don't tell."
"Right. I'll leave you two to whatever it is you're gonna do. Don't die," Jack instructed before sauntering back into the foyer and upstairs to his room. That was…disappointingly easy.
Meanwhile, Sollux had finished messing with the television and was now adjusting settings with a white remote control.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Karkat demanded.
"Hero form. Now." Karkat slowly took off his red gloves, feeling the sensation of transformation that accompanied the action. "Catch."
"Wha—" Karkat snatched the controller out of the air, instincts kicking in and making him move faster than he ever thought possible.
"Your ath goeth here," Sollux lisped, pointing to a spot on the beanbag next to where he'd sat down. "Mario Kart contetht. You're Printheth Peach and the rathe thtartth in three… two… one… GO!" The TV made a noise and the game began.
"You're so screwed. I am the fucking boss of video games. The games are my bitches," Karkat grunted, twisting the Wii remote sharply as the car rounded a corner.
"Ehehehehe. Jutht wait. Thith one ith a mod. Let'th thee if you thay the thame onthe the carth are going at twithe their programmed top thpeed," Sollux responded, grinning wickedly. He had shifted into his hero form as well, and his twin horns were crackling with red and blue psionic energy.
"Why the fuck do I have to be Princess Peach? Why can't I be Mario? Or Bowser? Or goddamnit, even fucking Luigi?" Karkat demanded angrily.
"Player One chootheth characterth," cackled Sollux as he steered Bowser around a sharp bend in the course. "It could be worthe."
"How?"
"You could be Toadette," Sollux shot back, laughing loudly as Karkat in his rage failed to notice a banana peel and fell off the course.
"Fuck you."
"You wish you could."
"You have stupid down to a science. It is to the point where it is obvious that I am better and smarter than you in every way, forever, but you don't understand—you're too stupid." Karkat made a turn to leap his car over a ramp, elbowing Sollux's neck in the motion. "Whoops." Sollux pushed back, nearly knocking Karkat off the beanbag.
"Oopth."
"You suck. You seriously suck. How do you get out of your bed in the morning knowing you're the worst thing a universe was ever responsible for?"
"Tho now I'm the wortht thing. And here I wath thinking we were getting a pretty nithe friendship thing going," Sollux retorted. He pressed a complicated series of buttons on his controller, and suddenly both cars sped up, along with the game.
"WHAT THE FUCK?"
"Game mod. Don't thay I didn't warn you."
"Is this seriously how you spend your free time?"
"Among other thingth, like my thuperhero career—ever conthidered that ath thomething? Oh, and I even have time for a girlfriend on the thide."
"I don't understand how you of all people have a girlfriend. In fact, I don't understand how any female has ever looked at you without at once turning skyward and erupting like a vomit volcano. Got an answer?" Karkat hit a series of ramps in the game and shot across half the racecourse, speeding in front of Sollux and dropping all three of his banana peels. Sollux's car skidded off the course and respawned once Karkat had stolen a lead.
"We have already ethtablished how much I thuck—but I don't thee you winning the game."
"Fuck you, I am clearly far in front of you, look. You just fucking fell off the race course! You can see on the little map thing, see how my icon is closer to the finish than yours is? I am winning the race."
"Becauthe I'm about to lap you. I'm on my thecond loop and you're thtill on your firtht."
"FUUUUUUCK!" Karkat shouted as Sollux's car sped ahead of his once again.
"Yeth. Thecond lap finished." Karkat growled and tipped his controller as far forward as it could go, moving his car along at what in the real world would be a breakneck pace.
"I'm going to beat you."
"In your dreamth."
"Fuck you. Fuck you and everyone you've ever known."
"Including you? Are you coming on to me, KK?" Sollux wiggled his eyebrows, not even turning away from the game for a moment. Karkat nearly choked on his exclamation of rage.
"Go drown in a bucket. You can fill it with your own tears."
"Harsh." The game dinged as Sollux's car literally flew over the finish line. Karkat shouted in anger and threw his controller into the ground.
"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!"
"Round two thtartth in ten thecondth. The ratheth are ten lapth each ath of now. If you can win, then you get to choothe your character, and I'll be Printheth Peach, got it?" Sollux grinned evilly, waiting for Karkat to take the bait.
"Fine. I will play this game, I will win, and I will shock you out of your pathetic mismatched shoes and socks," Karkat growled. "You'll see."
"Right. Oh—and full thpeed thtartth from the beginning thith time."
Karkat's gameplay was terrifying and hilarious to watch. He jumped up and down, leaning and elbowing Sollux like it would somehow help him pull ahead. His hair was in disarray, he'd taken off his Batman hoodie to throw it aside, and he gripped the controller so tightly that it left indents in his skin.
After the third race, Sollux got up and grabbed the blankets and pillows from the couch to make a massive pile, which Karkat promptly took over. There was much shouting involved, and Karkat wound up receiving a sharp elbow to the gut, knocking him to the side and causing him to become tangled in an old Disney Princess blanket he thought he'd gotten rid of years ago.
After the fourth race, Jack made a bowl of popcorn and sat down on the cushionless couch to watch the heroes play their video game. He kept throwing the unpopped kernels at the two boys like an immature elementary-schooler, and he smelled strongly of alcohol.
After the fifth race, the speed of the cars had increased so much that even Sollux fell off the course repeatedly before admitting that he needed to slow it down. Karkat cackled triumphantly until Sollux sent a red shell his way and his laughter turned to rage.
"Dude, you need to chill out," Sollux declared during one race as he and Karkat sped along a rainbow track through outer space (seriously, were these game designers on acid?). Karkat had lost count of how many rounds they'd played, and he still hadn't won a single one.
"I…will…fucking…beat…you…HYA!" Karkat shouted as he dropped a shell directly in front of Sollux, sending him spinning out of control.
"Thure." Sollux hit a ramp, which catapulted him over Karkat's car and into the middle of the track up ahead.
"GWAH!" Karkat threw the controller into the ground. The back casing popped open and two AA batteries fell out.
"KK, have you ever theen the Rage Quit videoth on Youtube? Becauthe frankly, I think you need to." Sollux's car passed the finish line yet again, and he put down his controller. "Let'th take a break."
By then, the sun had set, and the lights in the living room were still turned off. Moonlight streamed through the windows until Karkat flipped a light switch to reveal Jack asleep on the couch, face-down in the popcorn bowl and snoring uproariously.
"Holy shit. Sollux, it's eleven o'clock at night. Don't you have to go home or do hero shit or something?"
"Hero thit can wait, thith thity hath way too many of uth anywayth. And my dad doethn't give a thit whether I'm home or not ath long ath I get my ath to thchool every morning."
"That…actually sounds like it fucking sucks."
"Eh, it'th fine. My dad'th working on hith book at the moment, tho he'th pretty abthorbed. It'th not like he doethn't care about me," Sollux said nonchalantly. "Now come on. We have to do thome more invethtigation, we've played enough Mario Kart for now. The more important part ith figuring out what your abilitieth are. You already have your hero form, and thinthe you flipped your thit I'm athuming today wath your firtht manifethtation of any powerth at all. That'th really fatht, and the fact that you have your hero form meanth you probably have motht of your bathic powerth ath well, but you probably don't know what they are, correct?"
"Sollux. Listen. It's eleven o'clock at night on a school night. I need some sleep or I will die of exhaustion, having suffered through waking up at an obscene hour in the morning for more consecutive days than I ever have in my entire fucking life." Sollux considered this for a moment, before grinning wickedly.
"Heroeth have more enduranthe than normal humanth. You'll thurvive." Sollux began wandering through Karkat's house, leaving his game system plugged into the TV and still making noise.
"How the fuck do you know I'd have better endurance? You don't know anything about me other than the fact that I have the mutant freak ability to suddenly and randomly look like a lame-ass superhero. And I don't even have cool horns. Look at these horns, they are pathetic and shameful." To illustrate his point, Karkat gestured irately up towards his dull, rounded horns.
"Thut up. You look like a hero, and if you don't have other powerth then the univerthe thcrewed you becauthe never before have I heard of thomeone who looked like that and didn't have abilitieth to match."
"Sollux, I have to do my fucking lame-ass homework because flipping my shit in the middle of class and being distracted the rest of the day apparently doesn't excuse me from the drudgery of repeated, mind-numbing physics algebra that I don't understand at all. You have already occupied about seven hours of my time. Go home." Karkat herded Sollux back to the door, pushed him out, and slammed his back against the door.
"I'm coming back tomorrow!" Sollux shouted, his voice muffled by the insulation. Karkat slumped down against the door and sighed. He could already feel his eyelids drooping, and he didn't look forward to finishing the fifty-something math problems that Mr. Fenton had assigned in his absence. He didn't know how Sollux managed.
Karkat stared at the paper, pencil in hand, trying to decipher what Fenton wanted him to do. His vision kept blurring and losing focus as he directed every bit of energy he had left towards the assignment. If an object with a mass of eighty kilograms is falling from twenty meters, disregarding air friction and wind…
Karkat slumped forward onto the desk suddenly, eyes drooping shut. His mouth gaped slightly open, and the not-yet-dried ink of his pen smudged on his cheek. He was well and soundly asleep.
A/N: This chapter is longer than usual because if I ended it where I wish I could have, it would've been way too short. In other notes: SNOWMAN. WHY ARE YOU SO MUCH FUN TO WRITE? Because seriously, I am in love with that character right now in all her iterations. She's got a lot more depth than I used to think she did. My English teacher says that in order to understand a character you have to critically read the text and analyze meaning where meaning was never meant to be in the first place. You know what? Screw that. In order to understand a character, do the same thing you do to understand a person. Put yourself in their shoes by writing about them. You'll learn a lot.
Friday's update might actually accidentally happen on Saturday, because I have a really busy schedule this week and my teachers won't stop assigning homework. I might have to start updating slower, but for now I'll try to stick with what I've got. As always, thanks for the reviews and follows and favorites! XD