Note: Thank you all so much for your support guys. 8D You all rock. Freakin geologic formations up in here.
The terminology and basic idea of a "quadrant's clade" is borrowed from Hemostuck. I have adjusted the original meaning slightly to suit my ridiculous purposes. Still, credit and headcanon sourcing where it's due. Along with the clade exposition comes very slight amounts of shipping, but yunno, it's mostly for the story's sake.
This one's a slap longer than usual, but my fingers have been pretty busy. They are like little keyboard warriors at this point. I probably won't be able to squeeze out another update this quickly, sorry.
Enjoy. I hope it's up to snuff.
[T] Gapers, Clades, and Conspiracy
The rest of the night on board the ISS Devastator was grossly uneventful. Turns out everyone was expected to pair up and fight it out, with the added constraint of not drawing your own blood like a dirty little cheater, although Vriska was given a slide on that rule for being clever enough to be the first to think it up. Watching the rest of the recruits pair up and battle each other was intensely boring, although there had been several fatalities in total when some contests ended quickly and brutally between a vicious fighter and a timid troll who clearly had no business outside of an occupation caring for butterflies or something equally pathetic.
The twelve of them made it through without any serious damage: Sollux's opponent ended up on the unconscious end of a swift psionic blast, Feferi's opponent put up a valiant, if reluctant fight, but ended up with triple gouge wounds to the forearm, Kanaya took a scrape on the shoulder despite her impressive showing (her opponent, Tavros, had come dangerously close to getting a leg sawed off at one point, but he'd ended up victor), and even Gamzee kept enough wits about him to give his opponent a bloody nose within the first five seconds. Whether it had been a complete accident that he'd shot a Faygo bottle out of his sylladex directly into the face of his adversary is probably best left unsaid.
The losers were assigned to load gaper cleaning duty for the duration of their stay on the ship.
And there were a fuckton shipload of gapers.
"Holy-plugged-up-crapgasm this one is absolutely disgusting, I honest-to-shit think I might actually start crying. Kanaya, if I start sobbing bitterly like the protagonist in a shitty romantic soap opera who has just lost his one true hater to that bitch next door, you've got my full consent to shove my face down this FUCKING-PLUGGED-ASS gaper."
He heard something squelch from the stall next to him, and Kanaya's voice growl with disgust. A moment later the gaper flushed, and he heard her set a bottle down on the floor and sigh.
"Karkat. I am perfectly aware of the fact that you will not, under any horrific circumstances that may arise, much less this perfectly benign - albeit thoroughly disgusting - chore, be pressured into shedding tears that would risk showing the world your color."
Karkat held a plunger at the ready, staring down at the load gaper before him with a grim expression on his face.
"Well obviously that's why I'm asking you to choke my dumbsucking skull on gaper slime if I do start crying," he snapped, and brought the disclogging device down with a gut-turning squish.
The two of them were among the first batch with the cleaning duty that night; they and the other losers would cycle through task over the next couple of weeks.
When they were finished, Kanaya and Karkat left the load gapers and headed for the communal respite blocks, where some of the other recruits were turning in for the day. Alright, so technically it was not daytime when the ship was in transit through space, but it was still approaching the allotment hours for sleeping, and it was easier to stick to vernacular terms.
- grimAuxiliatrix [GA] started trolling twinArmageddons [TA] -
GA: Exactly Which Section Of The Respite Blocks Have You Settled Down In
GA: Karkat And I Have Completed Our Absolutely Titillating Load Gaper Duties And Are Currently Searching For A Suitable Location Of Rest
TA: room 1-a ju2t check your map2.
TA: iit2 2eriiou2ly hiilariiou2.
TA: all FF2 got two do ii2 2how up wiith her pretty liittle tyriian uniiform and "reque2t" 2omeplace 2he can be wiith her "acquaiintance2."
TA: of cour2e your maje2ty peiixe2!
TA: ab2olutely your maje2ty peiixe2!
TA: iits liike they thiink 2he2 goiing two lunge for theiir throat2 and make a bloody me22 all over the wall2 iif 2he doe2nt get what 2he want2.
GA: I See
TA: half of u2 nearly pii22ed our2elves laughiing at thii2 one guard2 face.
TA: ii think vrii2ka miightve for real.
TA: anyway yeah iill 2ee you two 2oon.
GA: Indeed
GA: Seeing As I Have Had More Than My Fair Share Of Excrement Cleaning This Night
GA: I Expect Any And All Hypothetical Urine To Be Cleaned Up When We Arrive
GA: Or I Might Be Forced To
GA: As They Say
GA: "Smakka Bitch"
- grimAuxiliatrix [GA] ceased trolling twinArmegeddons [TA] -
Karkat, who had been reading the message over her shoulder, snorted, glanced up at her, and voiced his opinion dryly, "Because the wreck we made of Gamzee's hive within two days means we can totally handle sharing close quarters for four weeks."
Kanaya sighed lightly, pulling up a map of the ship's interior on her grubphone and heading off determinedly.
"Perhaps it would do you good to be less negative for once, Karkat. We will not be spending the vast majority of our time in the respiteblocks. And it is certainly preferable to sleep among people you already know than to try your luck among a troupe of strangers of questionable soundness of mind."
"Yeah I'd much rather be vulnerable among a group of certified lunatics that I've known for sweeps than a bunch of strangers that could be sane or something," Karkat said earnestly.
Kanaya took a moment to give him a tired look before she continued walking. He let out a loud sigh and followed. Within five minutes they reached the rooms were the recouperacoons were held, behind numbered doors on either side of a long, straight hallway that was mostly empty of other trolls. A few were still passing down the hallway, checking rooms for open space or familiar faces.
Just as Karkat was about to turn the corner into the hallway and search for 1-A, Kanaya caught him by the elbow and pulled him back. He flashed his fangs at her and jerked his arm away.
"What the hell?"
"Karkat, I think it is best if we spoke here," she said calmly, "We've both been putting it off, but soon we'll be among the others again and I would sooner talk to you about this face-to-face. Will you take off those ridiculous shaded glasses of ours and speak to me openly?"
He looked away. "Alright, I know you saw. I'm an abomination, I'm a freakshow, et cetera and et fucking cetera. Are you happy now? Can we go?"
"Not quite," she said, voice low, jade-edged irises staring levelly at him as he fidgeted, "Karkat, look at me."
He growled slightly, and then pulled his glasses off and looked back at her. She stared wordlessly into his eyes, at that color that was creeping out around his pupil (instead of the rim, as was the norm) like impossibly spindly vines, a vivid, almost incandescent hue that should never exist inside a troll. The effect was disconcerting, like the black hole of his pupil was spitting fire.
"Karkat, how did this happen?" she said softly, uncertainly. Blood was one of those categories that you immediately registered when you started talking to someone, along with their horn shape and gender. It was just one of those things that helped you form a mental picture about a person, and for it to be practically absent or outside of the existing standard was jarring, to say the least.
"What do you mean, how did this happen?" he asked, livid, eyes sparking red, "I was born like this, that's how it happened!"
She grappled for the right questions, the right explanations. "But... I've never heard of... What about your lusus? How could one choose you in the brooding caverns if it couldn't recognize your color?"
"He had the same blood as me, numbshit," Karkat spat, "What did you think?"
"But that must mean your blood is on the spectrum," Kanaya said, her eyebrows furrowing, "Someone had to have bred a lusus species for your color."
"I don't know, alright? All I know is that I'm dead if anyone finds out."
She shook her head. "We don't know that, Karkat. If anything-"
"Well I'm not about to test whatever nookpanned theory you were about to spew forth from your gabgaper. I'm not a fucking panshattered imbecile a few killerbytes short on the conception of mortality," he snorted.
The two of them fell silent, and Kanaya was struck with a terrible thought. Mortality.
"Wait, so if your blood is this color," she struggled to think of a sensitive way to pose the question, "Do you have any idea how long...? Nevermind, I'm sorry. Forget I tried to ask."
"Yeah I'm a ticking time bomb," he said in a monotone, sounding almost bored now, "Maybe if I'm lucky it turns out I'll actually kick the bucket and drop stone dead in a few sweeps. Young, you know, before they notice I'm outliving a maroonblood's acceptable lifespan."
"Do not make vulgar jokes about this," she said shortly, but he just huffed in response.
"It's not like it really even matters," he rolled his eyes and put his glasses back on, "maroon has it painfully short but between brown and purple the difference in average lifespan's like fifty, maybe a hundred sweeps or so, and then the Empress is practically fucking immortal, isn't she? Everyone except red pretty much gets a decently shitty sweepcount when it comes down to it. And to be honest, we're all more likely to die of batshit unfair fuckery besides old age. Old age is a fucking illness you get if you've lived way too long. Look at those three earlier tonight in the ring who couldn't hold their own. One of them was a seadweller, remember? He might've lived centures upon fucking centuries on the Land of Peace and Sparkly-Ass Pansy Unicorns... Come on, let's just get going already."
With that he turned and strode back down the hall. After a moment of pause, Kanaya followed.
The black door printed with 1A slid open under a harsh barrage of Karkat's knuckles. Equius' scowling face came into view, his eyes focusing first on Karkat, then Kanaya through the cracked lenses of his shades. Wordlessly, he pushed the door open wider to allow them entrance, then promptly turned away, returning to where Nepeta was waiting for him, her back leaning against the scaly side of a recouperacoon and her stiff military uniform swapped out for a grossly overlarge cotton shirt of solid green (Kanaya swallowed some saliva and resisted the immediate urge to go over and at least hem the thing a little). Nepeta waved in welcome at the pair entering the room, and Kanaya waved in return, noticing for the first time a silver band strapped securely around Nepeta's left wrist, sporting a deep blue gem in the shape of a diamond. The craftsmanship looked precise and hard-wearing, if slightly mechanical. Immediately, Kanaya's eyes flicked over to Equius, and after a moment of searching, she spotted the ends of some kind of braided cord (leather, she guessed) hanging from the sleeve of his military uniform. Unless she was very much mistaken, there was a moon-green stone or glass shard woven in there somewhere. Kanaya felt the corners of her mouth lift up slightly. She glanced around to the others, eyes searching out any exchanges of jewelry. Now was a typical time for it; once the quadrantees made it on board with their significant others, it was an extra little gesture of support, of commitment, of coming-of-age. For circles of friends and especially quadrant-mates to arrange to go off-planetside together was quite common, because once you're shipped off, finding each other again could become impossible. Admittedly, roping in every last moirail's-matesprit's-kismesis'-palecrush's-auspitice in could get messy real fast, but luckily Kanaya's circle was rather closely knit.
Although, she thought, as Vriska grabbed Aradia by the horn, bound something silver-and-black around the base, and screamed bloody murder in her face, Sometimes that comes at the cost of peace and quiet.
Kanaya thought for a moment about the four green-gemmed pendants she'd stowed safely away in her sylladex, shining on their silver chains, and then put the thought aside until a later date.
Room 1A was not especially spacious, lined along the walls with perhaps two dozen recouperacoons in total, ten of which were already claimed (or eleven, now; Karkat was just now stomping over to an empty one on the edge, removed two spaces over from Terezi). There was what looked like a door to a decent-sized gaperoom on the far end, but precious little by way of privacy around the recouperacoons. They were just sitting out in plain sight. Kanaya sighed. Well, what was she expecting? This was a military Fleetship, not her home hive. Her hive was probably abandoned by now, if not demolished, and it would remain that way unless another jadeblood decided to move into her old property. Her isolated hive was far from ideal for anyone without sun resistance, what with being located much closer to Alternia's Solarsphere, where the days ran long and the nights ran short for most of the sweep, and most sane trolls never risked to tread.
She shook her head as tough to clear the homesick thoughts away (sunlight through patterned cloth, sand and marble and the dead rising from the dunes), and headed for a recouperacoon, choosing one adjacent to Karkat. Her thoughts touched briefly on the pendants again, but she shook it away.
"Fuck it, Kanaya, didn't you see me trying to get some distance from you nutters?"
She smiled gently at the snarly expression of his face, and examined the wall behind her recouperacoon. There was a small panel hidden almost out of view and covered with buttons, circular and all different colors, and she pressed a green one after a moment's hesitation.
An empty sylladex card embedded in the wall morphed into view. Kanaya smiled approvingly and unloaded some of her items into it, before pressing the button again to seal it. Next, she chose a blue one and touched it with one finger, bringing forth a new card that was stocked with basic cleaning items such as soap. Red was first aid, yellow contained a charging station for the Fleet-brand grubphone and husktop she'd received earlier that night, orange housed a set of knowlege grubs and schoolfeeds complete with cords and veins for easy download, and so on and so forth right up to purple, which instead of appearifying a new sylladex card on the wall, caused a pitch-black curtain of anti-light to rise up in a square around the recouperacoon from floor to low ceiling. Privacy, at least from any wandering eyes, but nothing solid. She hit the button again to turn off the curtain, and turned to see that some of her other friends were trying out the buttons as well.
Everyone was generally settling down for rest, finishing up conversations or raising the light barriers around their recouperacoons. It had been a long night of excitement. Kanaya hit the purple button again and undressed, then sank hesitantly into the unfamiliar recouperacoon. The welcoming slime closed up around her and she sighed, muscles beginning to relax, heart beginning to calm, and mind beginning to wander away into sleep.
- caligulasAquarium [CA] started trolling twinArmegeddons [TA] -
CA: before you block me or ignore me or wwhatevver let me just ask about howw that thing wwith fef turned out
TA: and before you commence 2hoviing your dii2gu2tiing, reekiing foot iinto your oral 2phiincter let me remiind you:
TA: be cautiiou2 of the 2hiit you 2pew on the iintergalactiic net2.
TA: were not planet2iide anymore.
TA: anythiing and everythiing that could be con2trued a2 trea2onou2 wiill get you liined up agaii2t wall and u2ed a2 target practiice.
CA: aww sol i didnt knoww you cared
TA: 2hut it a22hole, ii ju2t dont want two get kiiled by beiing 2omehow a22ociiated wiith your 2tupiidity.
CA: wwatch it you nearly sucseaded in offindin me there
CA: except i wwas too busy bein touched by your lookin out for me
TA: go down that road and iill per2onally 2aw your 2tupiid earfiins off.
CA: wwoww narcissist much? like i'd let you
CA: seariously sol stop tryin to construe my sarcasm as solicitation it gets old reel fast im not five fucken swweeps anymore
TA: couldve fooled me.
CA: anywwavves i didnt bother messagin you to entertain your dumb fintaseas
TA: oh god2 would you cut iit out with the pun2.
TA: ii promii2e, ii've been 2aviing a ma22iive piile of 2hiit iin my 2ylladex just waiitiing two fliip iit iin a conveniient diirectiion.
CA: yeah yeah wwhatevver so howw'd that fef thing go
TA: look iit2 not liike thii2 2hiit ii2 that ea2y. youd under2tand preciicely nothiing iif ii triied two explaiin it two you.
TA: iim doiing my be2t here, but the archiive2 are two well-guarded two be 2ure that iim contaiiniing all 2iignal2 about her blood2tatu2
CA: ya knoww wwhat wwould happen if
TA: alriight let2 2et 2ome thiing2 2traiight here.
TA: iid 2ay ii have approxiimately 200 percent more iintere2t than you do when iit come2 two protect the heiire222 liife, 2o ju2t 2hut up riight noww.
TA: 2hut up riight NOW goddamniit your fuckiing a2iinine quiirk ii2 rubbiing off on me.
CA: no wworries sol i don't care
CA: but seariously make sure fef's info doesn't leak evverywwhere and wwe're set
- caligulasAquarium [CA] ceased trolling twinArmegeddons [TA] -
TA: you fuckiing 2elf-ob22e22ed a222ucker 2top pretendiing to order me around.
TA: iif youre fliirtiing wiith me agaiin ii wiill 2eriou2ly p2ychapult your braiin2 out the next aiirlock ii 2ee.
- caligulasAquarium [CA] started trolling arachnidsGrip [AG] -
- caligulasAquarium [CA] sent arachnidsGrip [AG] the conversation file: IFUCKINPWWN. log -
- caligulasAquarium [CA] ceased trolling arachnidsGrip [AG] -
AG: :::;)
AG: I never thought I'd say this, 8ut Ampora, I am SO PR8UD OF YOU.
AG: We 8oth know 8eggers can't be w8nners!
End [T] Gapers, Clades, and Conspiracy
Thank you all ;3