I started listening to "Welcome to Night Vale." I have a new fandom now. SO MANY EXCITE. Like 6 excite.
Many thanks to fangirl4you, Wolfen Artist of Hetalia, obsessed01616, LinkinPark X, thepeopleofthecrysis, RandomAnonymous, BlOo KiSsEs, and CatastrophicAquarius for your reviews to the last act!
It was one of those quintessential southern California mornings, the kind that starts off gray and overcast and burns off into bright and sunny around nine-thirty or ten. Overhead, a few seagulls wheeled through the air, hunting through the parking lots and lawns for stray food. John watched them for a few minutes, wishing he could join them. Flying had always seemed really cool to him, and he wondered what it would be like to fly. He couldn't even imagine the sheer freedom to go wherever you wanted, whenever you wanted, being able to control your own flight, banking left or right, looping under bridges or around street signs, narrowly avoiding being splattered on the pavement, but he wished he could.
He reluctantly pulled himself away from his birdwatching and headed to class. Dave and Karkat would be there already. He was probably late already, but Deuce wouldn't care. He was too nice to publicly humiliate someone.
John sprinted full-tilt through the hallway until he got to his classroom door. He quickly shook his hair back (attempting to actually tame it would only lead to disappointment) and pretended that he hadn't dashed the whole way. He shifted his backpack higher and slunk through the door as quietly as possible.
"Hi, Mr. Egbert," Deuce called in his high, squeaky voice. John flinched and gave an embarrassed, half-hearted wave, and Deuce went right on with his lecture. John made it to the rest of his seat without incident, scooting past Dave (his headphones around his neck, his head tilted back, his eyes closed, and his mouth open; he was quite obviously fake-snoring) and settling between him and Karkat (his head tipped slightly to the right, his eyes unfocused, and his hand frozen over his notebook without a single word written on the page). Apparently he wasn't the only one having an off morning.
Both Dave and Karkat snapped back to reality as John sat down. Both of them looked surprised to see him. "What? What's with the looks?"
Karkat glanced at Dave over John's shoulder. John could only assume that Dave was looking back. They seemed unwilling to explain, hoping the other would jump in.
Karkat broke first. "You were late, so we thought... maybe you ran into someone on the way here."
"Someone? Like who?"
"Like... someone you may not want to fucking talk to."
"I don't—"
"Vriska," Dave cut in.
John blinked, his eyes widening. "Vriska? How could I run into her here?" It didn't make any sense—yeah, she'd called him last week and told her she was going to be coming here soon, but it couldn't be already. It was too soon—only a week!
Dave and Karkat exchanged another glance. John immediately didn't like it. "What?"
Karkat groaned softly and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Ah. Right. Well—" He stopped speaking, his eyes landing over John's shoulder, and John turned around just in time to see Dave stop shaking his head.
"Tell me. Is she here now? She can't be—she told me it would be a few weeks or something."
"Spider-bitch lied," Dave said. "There was a Vriska sighting this morning, and she's already reduced one guy to tears and is on her way to wreck another."
"You're probably on her list, too," Karkat added.
John looked from one of them to the other. "How—"
"Sollux told me. He and Aradia saw her. She started harassing my lab partner. Trust me, she's here."
"Just... be cool, okay? Don't... don't freak out or anything." Dave cast a cursory glance around the classroom. "Look, she's not here right now, so just relax. You gotta deal with her at some point, but... not right now, okay?"
John nodded slowly, his eyes dropping to his desk. Suddenly, it didn't matter that he'd been late for class. He felt caged, trapped, and all he wanted to do was abscond from the classroom, from the building, from the school, from his life. He felt the impending press of his doom closing in on him and he wished he could just fly away, at least for a little while.
Like until Vriska graduated, since expecting her too leave would require too much hope.
But apparently his panic showed on his face since the next thing he knew, Karkat grabbed him by one arm and Dave grabbed him by the other and they held him in his seat, pinning his arms to the desktop, so he sat there and tried to focus on something, anything that wasn't the prospect of seeing Vriska or the hands gripping his arms.
Dave slid the band of his headphones over his head and adjusted them so only the left one covered his ear. John heard quiet murmuring coming from the right one, pressed against Dave's neck, and instead he strained his ears to figure out what the voice was saying. He gave up after he heard what sounded vaguely like "semantic," "beautiful," and "jellyfish," and just closed his eyes. He sensed Karkat shifting slightly in his seat but didn't bother opening his eyes.
Class would be over soon, and then he could go home and hide.
"I thought I might find you here."
Equius blinked in confusion. Whoever was speaking was definitely talking to him—she'd lightly kicked his leg, either oblivious or deliberately ignorant of the waterfall of perspiration on his skin. He would have expected it to be either Nepeta or Aradia, but he knew the sounds of their voices and it wasn't either of them. Still, he couldn't help but think that she sounded familiar somehow, like a voice he hadn't heard in years.
He rolled out from under the truck he was working on and blinked again. "Vriska? Is that you?"
She laughed and leaned against the truck. "Who else would it be?" She looked around the campus hobby shop. "I have a feeling I'm the only female who's been here in a few decades, at least."
"No, Nepeta has spent time here," Equius said, getting to his feet and wiping his gloves off on a towel slung around his neck.
"Are you still hanging out with her? Really? I thought that was only some stupid first-grade thing."
"It was third grade," he murmured. "And she is my best friend."
She tossed her hair over her shoulder. "Whatever. I've got way too many irons in the fire to preoccupy myself with bullshit that's eleven years old."
"Vriska—" he started sharply, but she cut him off.
"Irons. Fire. All of the irons."
"I see. What do you want from me?"
She turned to face him, tilting her head to one side as if sizing him up. "Well, for starters, it turns out that a few people I've been... involved with, shall we say, actually go to this school. A fact that I was unaware of when I decided to transfer here, but..." Vriska grinned at him in such a way that he knew she'd known. "Well, what can you do?"
He remained silent, wiping his forehead with the back of his wrist.
"Right. You never were verbose, were you? Always the strong, silent type. Somehow, I'm not surprised you haven't changed. No one else has—Eridan is still a whiny little bitch, can't do anything without running off crying to Feferi, and Kanaya's grand solution to everything is hiding. I'm surprised I haven't seen Tavros around, either. He was so hard to miss for awhile. John's been MIA all morning—he's probably avoiding me, too."
"Can you blame them? I haven't heard the most charitable things about you from any of them."
"Oh, you know them all, huh?"
"Not Eridan," Equius confessed. "Except by reputation. He and Sollux have started a rivalry."
"Sollux? Who's that? Wait—is he that tall guy with the lisp and the weird glasses?"
Equius straightened up. "My brother and I made those for him."
"Wow, rivals? Huh, I guess Eridan has changed. He used to be so obsessed with getting people to like him. I guess he wants people to hate him now, huh? But from what I saw, it's not going quite the way he planned."
"What do you want from me?" Equius repeated.
Vriska flipped her hair in annoyance and crossed her arms over her chest. "Information. There's this girl, a friend of Kanaya's. Her name is Aradia. She—"
"I know her."
"Oh, good—"
"She's my girlfriend," he added.
"Are you serious right now? Her?"
"Not... not exactly. Not yet. But—"
"Oh, my God, Equius—"
"I will thank you not to use profanity around me."
"'Oh, my God' is not profanity. 'Shut your fucking mouth' is profanity, and I'll thank you to learn the goddamn difference."
Equius closed his eyes and took a deep breath, doing his best to rein in his temper. He didn't lose it very often, but some people had an inherent ability to anger him. Vriska was one of those people.
"Anyway," she went on, "since you're so close to Miss Megido, find out from her where Kanaya spends her time and clue me in. Add me on Pesterchum, too—my handle is arachnidsGrip."
"No."
"No, what?" She narrowed her eye in a sharp glare.
"I will not spy on people for you."
For a second, it looked like she was about to hit him. She wouldn't have done much more damage than a particularly small and non-lethal spider trying to harm a stallion, but it would have annoyed him either way. She thought better of it at the last minute, though, and simply dropped her arms. "Fine," she snapped. "I'll figure it out without your help. I have a Photography class to get to anyway." Shooting him one last withering glare, she turned and stalked out of the hobby shop.
Equius felt bad for the next person to run into her.
Eridan was able to suffer through World History and then Biology without incident. He deliberately ignored the way Karkat hinted he knew what happened this morning—apparently, everyone had noticed Vriska and, while she was charismatic and distinctly attractive, somehow knew she wasn't someone to be trifled with.
He managed to locate Fef after she finished swim practice and dragged her off campus for lunch—all the better to avoid Vris—while wishing, for some reason, that Sol was there as well to offer his own brand of emotional support, such as it was. After lunch, he made it to his next class without incident and dropped into his seat, feeling relief and some small measure of pride for having stayed away from Vris since she'd left this morning.
He didn't have much time to enjoy it, though. Moments after Kanaya sat down two seats in front of him and two seconds before their professor started checking attendance, the door flew open and Vriska sailed in.
The bile rose in his throat and he wondered if it was too late to leap out the window, but Vris had already caught sight of him and Kanaya both—That's right, Sol and Ara both said they had a thing—and grinned. He didn't like the predatory look or the way she kept glancing between the two of them.
"And you are...?" their instructor asked.
"Serket. Vriska Serket. I'm new," she added with a deliberately flirty toss of her hair.
Eridan let out an involuntary groan and smacked his forehead on his desk. In front of him, Kanaya started fumbling with her books. A few moments later, a folded-up sheet of paper slid under his arm.
Vriska was just sitting down two rows away from them but a roughly equal distance from both of them. Kanaya, on the other hand, had straightened up and was half-turned in her seat, shooting him a surreptitious glance.
I Am Of The Belief That Now Is An Appropriate Time To Hasten Our Exit.
are we runnin from the huge spiderbitch
We Are Not Retreating. This Is A Tactical Re-appropriation Of Emotional Defenses.
im not one for cuttin classes but yeah thats probably a good idea
We Should Stagger Our Departures. Two Minutes Should Be A Sufficient Lapse.
you goin first or me
You.
Eridan hadn't even unpacked his bag. He seldom did. So if he timed this just right...
But Vris could follow them, and out of the safety of a structured learning environment, away from the watchful eye of a professional educator, they might not be able to avoid an altercation.
Fuck it. As soon as his teacher turned around, Eridan slipped the strap of his bag over his shoulder, got up, skirted the edge of the classroom, and slipped out the door. He pressed his back to the wall a few feet from the door, counted to one hundred and twenty, and prayed the next person out the door wasn't Vriska.
It was Kanaya. "Let's go," she said, grabbing him by the sleeve and leading him through the hallway.
"Where're we goin'?"
"Away from here."
Considering "away from here" was a good deal better than "the same classroom as Vriska Serket," he allowed himself to be dragged out of the building.
EVERYONE IS FLEEING FROM VRISKA except we haven't seen Tavros's reaction to her yet. I have this idea that Gamzee would go completely apeshit (see canon Gamzee when he runs out of sopor pies) if Vriska tried to intimidate sweet little Tavros.
Yes, I like this headcanon a lot.
Good night, Night Vale. Good night.