"You two are late, we almost decided to get someone to go find you in case you were skipping," John gave his usual bucktoothed smile to Vriska as she entered the messy cafeteria with her sister.
"We were talking to the new kid!" Terezi exclaimed right away.
"How'd you manage that?" John handed a cleaning cloth to Terezi.
"Well she came up to us," Vriska, with a lingering expression on confusion on her face from the unexpected event, began to clean without any complaints.
"Yeah she apologized to Vriska about punching her this morning hehehe. And of course I apologized for licking her, it was funny cause when she came over she was keeping her distance away from me," Terezi cackled.
"Well yeah anyone would want to keep their distance after being licked by a psycho like you," Dave scoffed.
Terezi ignored Dave, "She went on about how she overreacted and shouldn't have acted that way, but I told her that it was alright cause that's the usual reaction I get from everyone after I lick them hehehe."
Karkat rolled his eyes, "Whatever just hurry up and get cleaning so we can leave."
"Right don't want to keep Gran waiting!" Terezi placed her cane on one of the already cleaned tables and expertly bounded over to a dirty wall dodging the tables and splotches of food on the ground. Sometimes the group wondered if she was really blind.
"Don't you dare go licking anything Tez!" Vriska shouted out. Hey she may be a bitch but she can care, especially if it's family, idiotic family.
"Hey I'm not a grub anymore, I have standards geez, I don't just lick everything. Especially not food splattered all over the walls and floor," Terezi looked offended.
"Really? Could've sworn you licked everything like there was no tomorrow," Dave said sarcastically. A cloth hit the back of his head and draped over it so it just hung there, "Alright that had better have been clean."
Dave turned and took the cloth off his head, ready to lob it at the perpetrator. He saw Sollux who flipped the bird at him with a smirk and was about to chuck the cloth until Jade appeared in front of him, pointing a mop stick in his face.
"Don't you dare start some sort of fight AGAIN Dave, we'll never be done at this rate if you keep this up," Jade scolded with a frown.
"Oh don't worry Jade~. There's lots of us here so we'll be done in no time!" Nepeta slid past the two humans with soapy sponges tied to her shoes. She was scrubbing the floor quite quickly and efficiently. Equius was watching from a table he was scrubbing, expecting her to fall any minute, when he realized that he was actually just mesmerized with the way she was somewhat dancing around, the strong troll looked away with a slight blush. Karkat saw the whole ordeal and narrowed his eyes.
If that strong obsessed freak has any idea of trying to pull a move on Nepeta-
"Karkat," Kanaya's voice broke through his threatening thoughts. He swore she could read his mind.
"Would you please go dispose of this in the appropriate waste bin for me," Kanaya placed a paper bag in her younger brother's arms that was filled with broken glass from a few bottles that got knocked over during the food fight. Karkat just grumbled and took the bag angrily and began to walk out when Eridan came in ranting about his father, as usual.
"For cod's sake, first he tells me to stop hangin' out wwith you guys because you're all such bad influences, and then he tells me I should help clean up because they're my 'friends' that caused the mess! Why can't adults make up their cod damn minds!" as he stormed in and walked past Terezi to grab a cleaning cloth she had begun mocking him behind his back and copying his body movements. Everyone tried to hold back laughs when Eridan turned to face Terezi with a glare and she just innocently went back to her cleaning as if that was what she was doing the whole time.
Karkat rolled his eyes and proceeded to leave to get to the recycling dumpster at the front entrance of the school. On his way there, he spotted Feferi watching through the glass window that looked onto the school swimming pool. She looked up at him upon hearing his footsteps.
"Oh hi Karcrab! I was just about to go kelp you guys, water you doing?" she asked in her usual peppiness.
"Throwing stuff out. It's alright we're almost done, I know how Dualscar tries to make sure you don't do any work."
"Oh but it isn't fair, I joined in too," Feferi pouted.
"What got you distracted anyways? You usually come join us in our dumb punishment with Eridan right after that nag lectures the fuck out of you," Karkat raised a brow.
"Oh come look, she's reely pretty!" Feferi beckoned.
Karkat thought that this would be a chance to kill some time and make everyone else clean up and be pretty much done by the time he came back so he walked over to the glass and looked onto the pool. A sea troll was swimming in the deep end of the pool, no one else was there. The bright orange flowery pattern of the girl's swimsuit contrasted greatly against her light grey skin. Light? Karkat noticed her skin was much lighter than a normal troll's. It was probably the light reflection in the water. The sea troll's long hair flowed like the water behind her with all the flips and spins she did underwater. It really did look pretty. Not that Karkat would ever say out loud.
"It's like she doesn't swim often or something," Feferi's face held slight confusion and sadness for the girl.
After a few minutes, the girl swam over to the edge of the pool and got out. Her long black hair looking a bit longer and straighter than normal. It was the new girl. She probably felt like the shower wasn't enough to get rid of that soup smell and took a swim after school or something. Or maybe as Feferi said, she didn't swim enough. But weren't sea trolls hives in water? Karkat would have to ask later. He saw she wore a sensible swim suit unlike all the other girls he knew. She wore swim shorts that were long up to her knees and she wore a swim tang top with spaghetti straps. Most girls wore bikinis and tried to show off as much skin as they wanted, but wow was that swim suit bright orange. What a strange girl. The new girl noticed that she had an audience. She looked up at them with wide eyes and Feferi waved with a smile. Zylpha just looked away with a slight blush and headed for the change rooms.
"Well I probably should throw this out and get back to the others now," Karkat feeling a bit like a creeper from watching a lone girl swim and decided he wanted to get the fuck out of there before the new girl came and spazzed at him.
"Alright I'll meet you in the cafeteria!" Feferi giggled and took off. Karkat just half-heartedly waved at the empress to be and began to take his time walking to the front while getting lost in his thoughts once more.
His group of interesting friends had gotten closer over the years. The death threats between them just became casual jokes. Many quadrants were filled and flipped. Most of the time though they were just one – dare he think it – a big happy family. It was comforting, considering most of their parents weren't around. Besides that, they were all living very content lives even with the messed up events over the years. The humans in their group were a prime example.
They were all family, but each kid had a different last name. Jade and John were siblings, but were separated when their parents were. After Jade's mother and grandfather died she was brought back to live with John, along with her dog lusus Bec. She still kept her different last name in memory of her dead grandfather. The same thing happened with Dave and Rose. Dave lived separately from Rose longer than Jade and John though because his older brother took care of them once their father died. Dave and his brother only decided to join into the family when Rose's mother and John's father decided to get married. They then became one big family. John said it was weird for human families to have their children all with different last names but Karkat saw that as perfectly normal.
All trolls had different last names from their siblings. They took the last name of the parent they resembled most. When Karkat was speaking to John to be more culturally sensitive, he told him that it was weird that the kids didn't all have separate lusus, John kept telling him that Bec wasn't a lusus though and a heated argument was caused.
Karkat shook his head at the stupid memory as he walked outside, shivering at the cold air that hit him. Many arguments were caused because of their culture differences and many more were probably to come. The troll sighed when he reached the recycling dumpster. It was going to be really loud and annoying later at his hive with the group coming over. Most of the time he found it annoying but The Dolorosa loved company so he was in no position to deny their visit.
Karkat tossed the paper bag into the dumpster carelessly. One of the shards poked out of the bag as he swung it and made a long cut on his palm as the bag flew out of his hand and landing in the dumpster. Karkat cursed and glared at the mutant red forming in his hand. This cursed blood that could bring danger to all his friends and family if anyone found out. The colour of the Sufferer. Karkat cursed again at the name the troll society gave his father. What sort of horrible event happened to cause his name to change and for the society to mark the mutant colour to his name?
"The Sufferer," a voice whispered. It took Karkat a while to realize that the whisper was not from his head and he whipped his head up with wide eyes. He clenched his fist and took a step back in horror to see the new troll looking at him with wide eyes of shock.
She saw and she knew. Oh man he was so dead.
