I stabbed Aranea so hard she exploded. "Bugger," she muttered, just as Vriska shouted, "Motherfucker!" hurling a barrage of energy balls at me. They weren't strong enough to kill, but I was left stunned long enough for her to punt me off the stage. She snickered evilly, then stopped. "Why are you smiling?" she growled.

"I know something you don't," I said, keeping my voice even.

"What!?" she snapped.

"I…AM NOT LEFT HANDED," I said, adjusting the handedness of my smart-controller, unleashing a furious six hit aerial combo culminating is a fully charged FUS-RO-DAH that blew away my troll's last remaining stock. We were playing Smash Brothers on Jake's TV, in case you were wondering. The pair of Scorpios were on a team against me. "C'mon, I've got to be better than you at something," I said, trying to sound modest while Vriska fumed at the TV. We do have TVs, in case you're a confused time traveler, little black hologram projectors with sticky feet that produce two-dimensional images. You'd think they'd be redundant thanks to the AR, and they are. It's all business and politics and blah, blah, blah.

"I wonder what the others are up to," said Aranea, sounding bored. Ah, yes, we were over here trying to distract her while Jake and Terezi were out looking for her original owner. Damn, me and Vriska used to do things, now we're just sitting here making cartoon characters smash each other with enormous hammers. Meh, fair trade.


With cat-like tread, Terezi made her way through the spacious manor. It was irritating to have to do it without Dave to be her eyes, but such was life. She'd gotten around just fine for most of her life without him, and she would do it now. Of course, having relied on Dave for almost a year, she'd lost a touch of her finesse. She only heard the sound of breathing coming from the room just as she walked in front of the open door. "What are you doing in my house?" Intoned a calm, androgynous voice.

Shit, thought Terezi. "Selling cookies," she said. "The door was open. Sorry."

"I'm sure," said the voice. Terezi decided the timbre was male. "Well, get in here, then." Er….

Terezi produced the one box she had been carrying. "This is the last one, see—"

"Don't you lot take orders though?" Dammit now, the way the voice went up at the end there was completely feminine. And what's worse, the person kept dropping Englishisms even though their accent sounded American. Terezi had no idea what to think.

"Yeah," Terezi muttered. Having never actually been a Tangle Buddy, she had no idea how the damn cookie thing worked.

"Well, let's see them!" said the person cheerily. Terezi did nothing. "They're right on the back of the box," a hint of suspicion crept into his (?) voice.

"I'm new," Terezi said with a squeamish smile.

The other person's breathing became tense and they drummed their fingers on the table. "If that's true, then you're wearing the wrong color scarf."

Hastily Terezi did the only thing she could think of. She played the disability card. Terezi thought of it as a personal failure to have to resort to it but damn if it hadn't worked every time she'd played it. She started tearing up and unleashed the hiccupping sob that had won her a standing ovation at the school play last fall. "Can't you see I'm blind!? You are such a mean insensitive person! I put on my sister's old scarf by accident and you think I'm…up to something?" She turned on her heel to rush out of the room, expertly dropping her cane in front of her feet and tripping herself up. She knelt in the doorway and cried some more.

The person rushed up from behind their desk (she could tell there was a desk because of the way the person's footsteps echoed). Dammit, their carriage was male, but when they approached, she couldn't tell if it was really manly perfume or really girly cologne that she was smelling. The person interpreted her sniffing as more crying, thankfully. "Don't cry love, I'll buy fifty boxes! How's that?"

Terezi sniffed. "Okay…." The guy (?) seemed to be too nice to have been the one who turned Aranea out, but she had to be sure. This would be a good opportunity to find out if s/he was hiding anything nefarious. And also their gender. And make some money too why not?

As the person filled out the form, Terezi started to say, "Well mi—" and that's as far as she got.

"Doctor," said the person. God fucking dammit that could be anything. "Dr. Calmasis," the doctor offered his or her hand to shake. It was neither particularly warm nor soft, not very big or very delicate, the hands of a person whose work requires skill and finesse but is very labor unintensive. Jesus Christ, would Terezi just have to go ahead and ask? Wait, there was something important she needed to do.

"So, how do you feel about troll battles?" Terezi asked as innocently as she could. Just a little girl trying small conversation, that's right.

There was a ruffling of cloth as if the doctor had shrugged, then s/he cursed under his or her breath and apologized. "I don't feel particularly strongly one way or another. Lynette and I don't really battle."

"Lynette? Is that the maid?" Shit.

"I thought you'd come in through an open door?" The doctor asked, sounding suspicious again. Thinking quickly, "I live nearby," Terezi said. My mom says you have a maid. A pretty Leo? I thought you just rented them out like everyone else." She turned her attention on her link to Dave. Ask her if Doctor Calmasis is really her owner, she said. She heard a soft purring through his ears and a soft warmness against his skin, and dare not look through his eyes. And whatever it is you're doing with her stop it, stop it!

Ballroom dancing, said Dave. You know you're my only one.

Fuck off, said Terezi, blushing, finally hearing the jaunty music.

"No, she's mine," said the doctor, scratching out another line onto the order form. "I was lucky enough to get such a great Leo."

Through Dave's ears, she heard, "Yes he is, the doctor and I have been together for years," followed by more contented purring. She's going to get the wrong idea, the skank!

"But what if she weren't so great?" Terezi asked, curling her mouth as if to say that she was just making casual conversation. "What if her personality was just so contrary to her built in capabilities that she was useless for what you wanted her for? Like, say, if she acted like a Scorpio?"

Calmasis chuckled. "That'll be the day. I suppose I'd just take her out behind the shed and…." Calmasis chuckled again, and didn't sound so friendly.


"You're pretty," said the kid with a crooked smile. Jake smiled down at him, a really pained expression. The kid was adorable, about eleven or twelve, with wheat colored hair and huge green eyes.

"Than you," Jake squeaked. "What's your name?"

"Cal," said the kid. Jake couldn't be quite sure of the gender, but decided it was a boy from the name. Maybe.

"How old are you?" Jake asked, mussing the kid's hair.

"Twelve," only two years younger than Jake himself, but he looked like some cherubic baby angel thing. Oh, and this is how I found out the bastard was older than me, and not a citizen. I mean, I'd guessed he wasn't from around here by his accent, but I figured he was British or something but he's actually from Washington. What the fuck? I digress. "Are you selling cookies?" He, the kid, asked with a flutter of his big girlish lashes.

"Yes…." Said Jake.

"I'll buy some if you give me a hug!" It seemed an innocent enough request and Jake was about to agree when he got a call from Dave.

"Hey, yo, politeness says I shouldn't talk to you but desperate times and I don't give a fuck—" he struggled with something offscreen and there was a feline yowling. "Seriously come help me out before Terezi shows up, she's got our guy we just need to call the cops but this crazy Leo is all up in my grill—"

At this moment the child groped Jake inappropriately. "You little rapscallion!" Jake shouted, in his real voice, stunning the kid into immobility. Affecting a female voice again, he said "That is not how you treat a lady!" and backhanded the kid before running off.

He met up with Terezi and Dave at the door, the latter of which had some dark green smears on his face and neck. Jake snickered. "I suppose that Leo was something of a cougar, eh?"

"Shut the fuck up," Dave muttered. "I'm traumatized. I'll need therapy for life. Or a good hard-reset might work."

"Tch, fuck that," said Terezi, caressing the troll's shoulder, "I'm going to melt you down into slag," she said, with the implication that she meant something entirely different. She kissed the corner of his mouth, right there in front of Jake, where other people might have seen. And then the three of them ran off as fast as their legs could carry them.


What did you think we were going to do? We told Terezi's mother. The place was crawling in Admins within the hour. "That creepy Doctor is going to pay so hard for his crimes," Terezi snickered to herself as she made Dave look out her window. "I can almost taste his anguish! Or hers. Whatever he or she turned out to be—OH!" She turned around to face us; of course I was present for the momentous occasion. "You guys, I made the AR take a picture!"

"So?" I asked. I was in a sulky mood; the Admins had needed to take Aranea as well. She was down there right now, in one of those police cars, waiting to meet her tormentor again. At least Jake was with her. By the end of the day, she'd be his troll, not this allegedly creepy doctor's.

"So you're going to look at it for me and tell me if it's a dude or not!" She shouted, stamping her feet.

Vriska smirked. "You can't even tell if something is a dude? It's easy, you just have to—"

"Vriska, no," I said, unenthusiastically.

"What?" she snapped. "I was going to say—"

"Something lewd and sexual?" I asked.

"Yeaaaaaaaah," she said tentatively.

"Then no," I said with an air of finality.

Terezi conjured up the picture. Jesus Christ. The doctor was clean-shaven, with white-blonde hair, big green eyes, and long, curly lashes. And I sure as fuck couldn't tell you their gender, and that's what I told Terezi. "Dammit!" She punched the wall in frustration.


Terezi's mom came home after midnight, looking very haggard. Terezi was waiting for her in the living room. "What's wrong?" She asked.

"The case is more complicated than we thought," said Captain Pyrope, wiping her brow and setting herself down on the sofa (I almost wrote 'Mrs. Pyrope', but my editor, who was looming over my shoulder at the time, elbowed me in the ribs and set me straight; she's been hanging out with Vriska too much). Latula ran off to get her a beer. She accepted it and drank very slowly. "First of all," she said, "Dr. Calmasis is a fine young person. Aranea belonged to the doctor's ward, Caliborn."

Terezi blinked. "Huh?"

Dave muttered, flatly, "What."

The chief nodded. "I know, he's only twelve. He bought her from an illegal hatchery. Aranea didn't even know because she couldn't tell the difference, having never been to the real one."

"Wait," said Terezi, sounding worried. "What are you going to do with her then? If she's not, like, a real troll—"

"We raided the hatchery this afternoon," Captain Pyrope said. "It was in the warehouse district, just a few blocks from where you ran off to the other day. Everyone was gone but they left their equipment behind. They were using the most up to date equipment and materials. Everything was kosher. For all intents and purposes, Aranea is a real troll." She finished her drink and laid back, finally relaxing. "We're going to run some tests, make sure she doesn't have any surprises on her. But if not," she finished, "she'll be transferred over to Jake in the morning."

Terezi squinted, or rather had Dave squint. "Are you intentionally using gender neutral terms to describe the doctor?" She asked accusingly.

The chief smirked. "You want to be an Admin? Figure it out for yourself. Now, to bed with you."

Terezi cursed and ran off to bed. Then she called me and Jake with the news.

Now I'm happy for Jake and Aranea, of course, but the idea of someone making counterfeit trolls is deeply unsettling to me. They're already artificial humans. Imagine being a cheap knock-off of an artificial human? I told them not to bring it up in front of her. Lord knows what this might do to someone's self-esteem.


Fortunately, there was nothing wrong with Aranea. We had a celebration over at Jake's house in one of the more middling neighborhoods. His dad looked a bit like a Greek H. G. Welles and had a big, dramatic voice like what Sir Ian McKellan must have sounded like when he was younger, if he'd been American. He kept using archaic slang like it was going out of style. Jake's mother was a bit younger than his father. She very pretty lady, with delicate features, very long, very blonde hair, Jake's exact eyes, and a British accent. It was easy to see how the combined product of the two of them equaled Jake. The two of them kept getting into very polite, very British arguments.

"Honestly dear, you can't experiment on these children," she said, arms crossed.

"It's not an experiment darling," he said, with a very Jakish smile. "I'm not going to force them to eat balut. I'm just going to leave them here on the table and if they should happen to—"

"I'm not about to allow you to gently lower a basketful of chicken embryos onto my nice clean table," she said.

He dropped the basket unceremoniously onto the table. "You and I are going to have words, English," she said, dragging him away by his ear.

"You're English too since you married me darling," he reminded her. "And technically you were before that too."

"You know I don't allow puns in my house." Vriska reached over and grabbed an egg. "Bottoms up," she said, sucking out the embryo inside as everyone gagged.

Of course, there isn't much to say about this now. We had fun, but it's not fun to read about people having fun. I can tell you how happy and Aranea and Jake looked sitting together, arm-in-arm, and I swear I saw devotion in their eyes, and I wondered if they were going to turn out like Dave and Terezi. Damn, do you how weird it is to be the only normal person in a group?

After having a meal of Chinese takeout that Jake's mother was gracious enough to order for us, we went out back and discussed battles. We hadn't had one in ages and decided on a brief sparring session. Dave and Terezi wiped the floor with us. Again.

"Chamberlains," Dave said, "you need to step up your game."

Terezi clarified, "just flailing around until you get a good roll isn't going to win you anything." She snapped her fingers. "Dave, give them your extra sword."

He pulled something like a kitchen-knife handle out of his back-pocket, and with the push of a button it unfolded into a dull grey, single-edge blade that almost looked real. "You use a sword when you transform, so you might as well learn to use it," he said, handing it to Vriska.

She smirked. "Giving me a weapon is the biggest mistake of your life so far, Dave." They wiped the floor with us again.


In the dead of the night, Caliborn wandered the backyard, as he often did when distraught. The stupid Admins had fined his stupid legal guardian and then the stupid sod had gone and grounded him! It was all Aranea's fault. He'd get his revenge someday. When he got his proper troll, in a few months he'd be careful and make sure she wasn't an idiot. He kicked a rock into the swimming pool. Something rustled in the bushes nearby. Probably just a cat. He picked up a stick and readied to throw it, only for a powerful hand to grip his wrist, nearly crushing it. The cat, a big white one, yowled in fear as it jumped out of the bush and ran across the yard, up the fence, and away.

"As if I'd ever be that noisy," said a high feminine voice, dripping with malice. "So you like to beat up trolls, eh kid?" Caliborn turned, slowly, with dread building up in his stomach. He screamed.

"I'm sorry Aranea!" he shouted. "I'll treat you better I promise!"

Vriska raised an eyebrow. "Aranea? She wishes!"

Then she kicked him in the shame globes, dropping him in the pool and disappeared into the night.


Author's Note: Probably not the best chapter, but it's setting up some really major plot-points, they will be so sexy, you have no idea. Next chapter will be up tonight because I leave for Comic-Con tomorrow (you are jealous), and will be the last thing I upload for quite a bit, seeing as I have nothing else finished and will be gone for a week. But...I think the next one is my favorite chapter in any of the fics I've written (favorite fic overall is of course Breath Waker, with T of P in close second).