THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, for all of you who leave reviews and are for some inconceivable reason still reading, some of you are even COMPLIMENTING this piece of shit. And another thank you for all the helpful input as well, and all this waiting! Especially the waiting for me to turn out each chapter because at this point I've thrown schedules to the wind and gone rampant, actually spending my nights SLEEPING occasionally (haha, that's a lie.) But seriously, all these reviews I've gotten? It keeps me from giving up on this story all together. I will try and keep up with the updates as scheduled but man if you saw the fucking bags under my eyes,,,! but I know how frustrating it can be to start a story and then have it discontinued or it takes about a million years to update. Feeling sucks. So I shall keep working on this shit till the wee hours of the morning 'cause I never have any other free time. It's not like I've lost interest in this story or anything, im just having trouble getting over this minor authors block *ahem* laziness.
I don't think I could ever really disband this story; it's just my baby now.
And its gonna have to deal with having a mad cow for a mom, so go back upstairs and put on a PG rating young lady!
Chapter 9: Progressing through the days
The sun was setting over the expanse of the now white city as Karkat and Gamzee walked the couple of miles home, opting to be in the open air rather than the stuffy metal box the humans called a bus…nah, they were just stingy bastards that didn't want to pay the 5 human boondollars to get on a bus they were going to have to dismount halfway home anyway because their apartment was in the middle of 'god knows where' and 'pffft I AINT WALKING THAT FAR!'. But they did have to admit it was pleasant, and they both enjoying the scenery that Washington's downtown suburbs had to offer.
The winter frost had snuck up on and surprised them all. Most of them had never even seen snow before. Which was to the everlasting enjoyment of all the trolls when they woke up one morning to find the ground blanketed with the stuff, spare maybe Karkat and Tavros who stayed inside, the rest of them revealed in the glory of being able to peg what was essentially frozen rock hard sludge at each other without need of a rhyme or reason other than 'fuck the police! Human customs!'
Gamzee enjoyed the pleasant silence between him and Karkat on their daily walks home. Neither of them ever felt the need to start any unwelcome noise to disturb the tranquil momentary peace which would vanish the second they stepped foot into the apartment.
Breathing out deeply and watching his breath as it swirled around him momentarily before vanishing in front of him, Gamzee couldn't help but look back at the month.
After that first strenuous day back in the land of normal and tedious, things had been looking up. Gamzee had taken Karkat's human perigee measurer and had marked out all the…significant events that would happen every month. Knowing that he had a slight grasp on the situation made him feel calmer and now things were started to get… better. His mood was mostly constant and never flared up with the strange unexplainable anger that clung to him for a solid two days afterward. But over the course of those two short days Gamzee was feeling completely (almost) comfortable back in his own body, snug in his own skin, back to normal again.
But to say that things were the same as before would be a lie. Things weren't the same, Oh no, far from it.
For starters Karkat had taken to tagging along with him wherever he went and to be honest it was starting to annoy him. Sure, who wouldn't want to hang with their pale bro as much as possible right? But this was ridiculous. Oh he knew that Karkat meant well and it wasn't like he was clinging to him like a drop-bear-beast* or stalking him everywhere, but god forbid he even LOOKED at someone funny before Karkat just happened to magically rock up in the same room or start herding Gamzee away. Best motherfucking friend must have taken flash step lessons from Dirk because there was no way he could sneak up that fast on Gamzee's without him noticing.
And the planning. All the nonstop organising Karkat kept dragging him into was starting to wear down on his thinkpan as well. Man, sure things had to be done and things needed to be arranged but couldn't a motherfucker have some peace? Just five minutes without Karkat fretting and fluttering around him like a broody hen as the days ticked by, and if not for his sake but for Karkat's. Poor bastard was working himself to the bone for Gamzee's sake. Honestly Gamzee hated it beyond measure because Karkat looked just as worn out as him. And to top it off Karkat was only doing it because he had gone and convinced himself that he'd have to all up and look after his ass every other second of the day. And Gamzee knew he should have put a stop to it already but he just couldn't say no to him after all, look at all the shit he had pulled him into, it seemed only fair that Gamzee listened to every rant Karkat threw at his direction and ate his green's when he was told. He would make himself sit through all the questions and let Karkat drag him around the neighbourhood to scope out the spot where they could see the building far off in the distance that they had found for…That.
They had been taking the same route every day for the last two weeks now with little success when Karkat's interests were significantly peaked when Aradia had mentioned a creepy abandoned warehouse nearby to their apartment block. Like every other walk they took, they were scoping out the area every day to check if anyone DID enter or leave and it didn't just SEEM deserted.
"And nobody ever goes there! Ooooooooh, it would be the best place to host a corpse party!" Aradia clapped her hands together in excitement at the prospect of the perfect adventuring and corpse party hangout.
"Ok first off 'Rad, there are no CORSPES to have a party with, so first flaw there. SECOND flaw is the fact that nobody in their right fucking mind would step foot in that god awful dusty shit hole." Sollux exasperatedly listed off with his fingers, ANYTHING to keep Aradia from tomb raiding was generally a good idea.
So they'd done their research, scoped the area only to find it surrounded by fields and some *semi* placid cows, and to open up into a very dusty shithole. But a very dusty shithole with lots of abandoned rooms nonetheless.
After continuing to check in on the area to make sure it was completely desolate of life apart from the stray rodents and flying rats that lived in the rafters Karkat was pleased to find it was absolutely deserted. They decided that this would be the place, though Gamzee was sceptical (then again he WOULDN'T be too enthusiastic about this than would he). It might have been a warehouse or a mill before it had been abandoned, they didn't care. It was isolated, big, and had a fuck ton of maybe-up-for-consideration- rooms. After a thorough search and rummage they had alchemising space station doors reinforced with steel to a small loading area that already had a good heavy garage door that opened up to the main bulk of the building instead of just the simply locks and flimsy wood doors that where hanging off their hinges that comprised of the rest of the rooms entrances and exits.
They went for pure iron and multi folded steel for the doors. Alternian wood or not Gamzee had almost broken through the doors in Karkat's basement before so they hoped that metal would keep him out better. Or rather IN better.
Karkat had had to think pretty damn fast on his feet when Kanaya had asked him about the absence of his door or about the scratches that where lining his basement walls and scratched floor when she had been bringing down that week's laundry. Some speedy thinking on Karkat's part had gotten him out boiling water that he had no intention whatsoever of going anywhere near again. Still, Karkat needed to calm his tits down before he blew a blood vessel in his forehead or some shit.
But maybe Karkat was right to be organised, to be prepared for anything, prepared for the worst. After all.
Only a few days to go…
He was dreading the impending doom that the motherfucking lump of rock that orbited the planet promised. Honestly they didn't know what was going to happen, didn't know whether something would happen at all, didn't know if things would be better or worse. But Karkat knew that they had to be prepared and Gamzee tried to follow his example but to be honest….
He was scared.
As things had gotten better he kept trying to convincing himself that everything was normal, every time he woke up in the morning convincing himself it had been a dream, just a reoccurring nightmare, but the chafing binding around his leg couldn't have been imagination and the blinding pain he remembered ripping through his body wasn't either, he wasn't that fucked up to all up and imagine that. He had to face the truth sooner or later that it had happened.
And was most likely going to happen again.
Karkat had made him keep a small journal to keep track of any unusual shit that was happening to him. He was still practically ignoring the thing, only ever picking it up to doodle in or to jot down meaningless shit when he couldn't sleep because of the horrorterrors that kept invading his sleep, starting to grow more and more common the closer he got to deadline.
The headaches were getting worse.
Everything was planned, everything as ready, nothing could possibly go wrong…Gamzee hoped for that at least.
~ O-O ~
*For all those who are about to puzzle your thinkpans on what a drop-bear-beast is, it is in fact, a Koala. You watch out for those! We don't talk about them drop bears! (Im totally joking, but please note that I have actually known someone who has been jumped by a koala and it attached to his face like a head-crab from half-life, that it all)
Because this chapter is so long in it full length I shall be counting down the days in the next four chapters so they will be shorter and update SOOOOOO much quicker for at least three more chapters. Authors notes will be absent (HALLELUJAH NO MORE LONG ASS AN's!)
I TIP MY TINY TOPHAT TO YOU FOR THE NEXT FEW CHAPTERS TILL MY HAT TIPPING RETURN!
omg…just stare at the word 'hallelujah'…..whoa…..who needs drugs to get high when you got something as trippy as the English language to stare at /QoQ( *words swoon*
