A/N: Salutations dear readers!
I have returned from the several months of self-imposed exile, and now I have prepared a new chapter for you guys and gals.
Act II has officially begun, and Beta kid interaction will now begin.
As always, Andrew Hussie owns Homestuck, and I am just a poor person who owns a Winnebago and three OCs.
Please review, and I dearly hope that you enjoy.
Upon a bright, sandy world, Chris slowly awoke.
Sleepily, he opened his eyes, mind still dull and hazy.
The first thing he had noticed was that he was lying face down in some sort of powdery yellow stuff, that was grainy and coarse. Dimly, he hoped it wouldn't scratch his armour, re-prototyping a new set would require going all the way back to his...planet.
That train of thought had brought his thoughts to the recent past.
The Black King.
His friends.
Victory.
A strange platform.
...and then... nothing.
He couldn't remember any more.
Now jolted out of his sleepy state, the young thief wobbled into a standing position, already growing resentment at the strange ground, and how it shuffled and shifted beneath his feet. Trying to remember what had happened and where his friends were, Chris inspected his surroundings. He was on a beach of some kind.
Nearby, waves gently lapped at the shore, while golden rain-clouds gathered offshore.
He then noticed another thing about this new environment that he disliked. It was so bright. Nearly painfully so.
There was not a comforting shadow in sight.
His mind still dim from his abrupt awakening, and still very confused as-to his surroundings, Chris fell back on instinct, and immediately looked for somewhere to hide from the sun's scouring rays, and potential unfriendly eyes until nightfall. At night, he reasoned, he would have the advantage, as he had excellent night vision, and he would be far harder to see.
Sighing dramatically, and with no clear goal in sight, he began trudging along the beach.
As waves softly washed against the shore, Chris found himself wondering again about what had happened. He vaguely remembered receiving a message from his new friend...He remembered doing something with a shiny door-knob...then...there was a great pulling, lights and sounds...
Now he had spontaneously woken up on a beach.
Pulling the coat tighter around himself, he shivered, and grumbled something incoherent.
He soon realized that this strange ground material, Sand, he believed it was called, was a total hindrance for walking and sneaking. Especially when wet.
It was noisy, and his metal boots sunk into it, and it got stuck to everything when wet. Chris had definitively concluded that this "sand" was absolutely terrible and awful in every way.
As he continued mentally complaining over the ground, he noticed something in the distance. It was a large, several story, white house, with sprawling additions on the first floor, and a very strange part that jutted out over the water, and... poured...rainbows? Into the shimmering water.
Chris was thoroughly confused.
Still, in his confusion, one instinct remained.
'Whoever lives there must have lots of shinies...'
Chris tried to squash the thought, there were far more important things to do and think about, like planets, and friends, and denizens and...
Yeah, shinies it was.
Conspicuously crouching down, he began to slowly advance on the house, hoping to, at the very least, get out of the omnipresent sun.
After much cunning stealth, he had climbed the hill, and approached the strange house. It was built like, one of those, new, "Square modern houses" that Chester had mentioned in his lecture on the history of architecture... Although the modern homes that Chester had described didn't seem to come with rainbow waterfalls, and strange personal islands.
Fundamentally, Chris didn't like the house. It was too flat and blocky, there weren't enough crenellations to hide in, or climb. Still, undeterred, he made his way around, to where he assumed the back-door would be.
After much searching, as the house proved far larger that it had first appeared from a distance, he had finally reached the rear entrance. Even better, the door was a glass sliding door. He had the perfect instrument for this...
Fiddling with his fetch-modus, he withdrew his trusty glass-cutter, and pressed it to the door...
Then he stopped.
He had just realized.
He was a god-tier.
He could pass through the glass.
He could have flown the entire way here.
Without once touching the accursed sand.
Chris really felt like a complete...whatever Evan usually shouted at him.
Sheepishly Re-captchaloguing the tool, Chris simply closed his eyes, and tried to "phase-out". Opening his eyes, after several moments of exertion, he noticed that he was not shimmery at all. Hmm...
He tried to recollect how he had done the "phasing thing" earlier.
Usually, he just sprinted at solid objects, and passed right through...
Taking a few steps back, he really hoped that he wouldn't end up simply breaking through the glass door, as that would completely shatter the pretences of "stealth", that he had been aiming for.
Still, hoping for the best, he took a deep breath and sprinted at the door, eyes closed.
The expected crashing of shattered glass never came, so Chris immediately slowed to a walk, and opened his eyes.
Beneath his helmet, the boy grinned. He was in.
Then, he began inspecting and appraising the interior of the sprawling house.
He stood in a kitchen of some kind, with mostly grey furniture and silver appliances. A particular feature of note was that the lights in, seemingly the whole house, were off. Combined with most of the blinds being down, this gave the interior a cool, dark, atmosphere.
Chris slowly entered the kitchen, trying to be as quiet as possible.
Those attempts were instantly ruined, as all of the sand stuck to his boots began to immediately make sloppy, wet sounds against the ceramic tile floors.
Cringing at the noise, Chris took a few steps back, tried to clean his boots on the doormat as best he could, shrugged, and then tried again.
The noise was...reduced, so he figured it should be good enough at this point, besides, it wasn't as if anyone was actually home.
Right?
Once again, he resumed his exploration of the kitchen, noticing a peculiar...note? On the fridge.
Coming closer, he noted that it was just some sort of page, stuck to the refrigerator with a very fancy magnet. The page had some sort of genuinely awful scribble on it, which made Chris's prior artistic attempts look perfect by comparison. This...drawing...was just genuinely bad. A part of the page was resting on some sort of velvet, knitted pillow that lay on the floor.
Chris was completely confused.
Still, he did get one thing out of staring at the fancy pillow and fridge magnets.
These people were rich.
Already imagining the shinies that awaited him, he left the kitchen, and entered some form of combination stairwell, and living room. A large granite stairwell dominated the room, surrounded by assorted statues and carvings, while a towering stone wizard looked down upon the room. Luxurious and visibly expensive furniture adorned the room, which only added to the sense of grandeur and wealth that the house emanated.
Chris stared in mild surprise at the massive wizard statue for a few moments, before simply concluding that it was, like everything else there, put in place by some rich, old, eccentric, and that it really held no real purpose.
Then, as he crept further into the room, a glow from one of the chairs caught his attention, and he froze.
Slowly, he turned towards it, silently reprimanding his boots for scraping against the floor...
At first, as his eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness, he could only tell that the glow was coming from some armchairs in the far corner of the room.
Then, as his vision readjusted, and he crept closer, he could finally see what was over there...
There was a girl sitting in one of the chairs on the other end of the den, a laptop placed on her knees. She had short blond hair, and wore a knee-length skirt and a T-shirt that had a purple, horrific, eldritch creature depicted upon it. Chris was horribly reminded of a certain Light Souls boss...
She had looked up from the screen, and was staring in his exact direction, with a mixture of curiosity and mild alarm.
Chris shivered under her gaze, but remained calm. It was dark, he was crouched and stealthy, she had likely been staring into a bright monitor for a time, there was absolutely no way she could see him...
As she scrutinized his location, and Chris stood perfectly still, trying not to move or breathe, her laptop emitted a pesterchum message noise, and her gaze fell to the device on her knees.
Chris internally sighed in relief. Now, he just had to remove himself from this situation without being detected...
She then suddenly looked right back up, staring straight at him, and while slowly reaching for some kind of wooden stick on a nearby table, casually called out,
"Greetings, stranger...You are aware that I can see you, correct?
Chris panicked, gave out a shrill squeak of some sort, began trying to back away, tripped over his Gog-tier cape, fell over in a heap, and shrilly called out,
"Imnotaburglar!Iswear! Pleasedon'thurtme! Ijustwantedtogetout ofthesun,andImlostandscared!"
She lifted an eyebrow, looked at him for just long enough to show she was onto him, and said, "I never implied you were a burglar..."
A few silent moments passed, which, to the fallen Chris felt like hours, spent under the girl's scrutinizing gaze. Then, with an exaggerated sweep of her arm she beckoned to another arm-chair,
"...Have a seat, I suppose. Would you care for some tea?"
Chris shakily rose to his feet, and guiltily shuffled to an adjacent chair, lowering himself into it slowly. For a while, he sat in silence, watching as the girl simply continued to nonchalantly type on her laptop, leaving him to stew in his fear and guilt.
Just when he could bear the oppressive and judgemental silence no longer, she spoke,
"And who might you be? As far as I am aware, there are only three other humans in this session. You, are not one of them." Still holding her strange black stick, she continued, "Thus, that begs the question, Who are you? And how did you get here?"
Chris nervously looked at her, removed his helmet, and began,
"Well..."
XXXXX
Rose was having a very strange day.
Well, sure, it had begun with reality-warping games, and planet destroying meteor showers, and then graduated to alternate dimensions, and strange aliens on pesterchum. But the strange young boy sitting opposite her, was perhaps the strangest part of it all.
Looking at the situation analytically, she could easily connect and explain everything, from the meteors, caused by Skaia's defence portals sending chunks of space rocks away from the planet, and coincidentally, towards Earth. The alternate dimensions made sense, if one looked at their prior universe as being just another piece in the extra-dimensional puzzle that was Sburb. Though she knew little about the aliens, save for the two conversations she had thus far had with the one called Kanaya, and whatever scraps of information John was able to give her, the aliens, or "Trolls", as they called themselves, also seemed to logically fit into the chain of events, as fellow Sburb players, and the creators of the universe that she and her friends inhabited.
This, "Chris" boy however, made absolutely no sense.
Apparently, he and two friends had played Sburb, in some sort of other universe. One that had absolutely no relation to either her or the troll's session.
According to the strange boy, things involving Winnebago's, Spaceships, and God-tier transformations had occurred, and then he had somehow got pulled into her session.
That part, made no sense, as Chris's session had seemingly nothing to do with her session, until he and his friends defeated their Black King. Then...something happened, and now Chris was here, chattering unceasingly in her living room.
Their initial verbal exchange could be described as Chris telling her absolutely everything about himself, and absolutely not caring to even ask where he was, or who she was. According to him, "ThoseareChester 'ssmart, hefiguresall thisstuffout, Ijustdowhat he says."
Then, she subtly interrogated him for a bit, trying to discern his motives and allegiances.
Apparently, he didn't know what motives even meant, and he did whatever his friends told him to...
Her task successful, she sat back to ponder these developments, as Chris continued to chatter in the background...
"Andthenhomeless santatookthelady'spurse andcarriedit awayfor 't heswell?" Chris continued babbling, seemingly oblivious to Rose's faraway look, and thoughtful demeanour.
Apparently, she had learned, Chris and his friends had all ascended to God-tier during their session, through very...unorthodox methods. When questioned about it, Chris had skirted the subject, visibly uncomfortable. Unsatisfied with his vague answers, she had then simply tricked him (With great ease), into accidentally revealing that his friend Evan, had dragged him out to a quest bed, and simply shot him there. Apparently this 'Evan', had also shot himself on his own quest bed...
At that point, the only thing she could think was, 'What on Earth was wrong with their session?' There was apparently a player murdering others, and some sort of rugged camping vehicle that had been destroyed several times, only to re-appear later, completely intact. She reasoned Chris wasn't a very reliable narrator, but still, even taking his (sometimes insane) statements with a grain of salt, still resulted in very odd implications about their session.
Still, she had at least gleaned one useful tidbit from Chris's ramblings, and that was that the small boy opposite her was harmless enough. His story had so much irrelevant background detail, was delivered with so much conviction, and with absolutely no hesitation about revealing details, both trivial and critical, that she concluded that he was either simpleminded and telling the truth, or he was a brilliant genius and an extremely devious manipulator, sent to their session for some as of yet unknown agenda...
Anyway, the 'Simple-minded, harmless boy' angle seemed to make far more sense, and was vastly more likely, so Rose relaxed a little bit, but still kept her wands ready for action.
Tuning back into the conversation, she immediately noticed that it had, seemingly unconsciously, taken a very sinister turn. Chris was now talking about his home, and jovially described an individual known as "Homeless Santa", and how he had "helped" a lady, by taking her purse, and running away with it...Chris seemed completely oblivious to the self-evident criminal nature of the event, and continued to happily describe events and places around his home,
"Andthenfor awhileaftermybrother's farmout inthewoods wasclosed, hedidn'twork,buth thenhegot hiredat a BROtell,whichIguess islike ahotel,butforpeople whoarebro's." 'Brothel?' Rose quietly wondered, growing ever-so-slightly unsettled by the sheer naivete of her guest, who simply continued chattering "wheneverIwas donewandering aroundtown, Iwouldstopat thebrotell, andtherewouldbe allthesenice ladiestherein swimsuits,andthey wouldgiveme animalcrackers and aDVDplayer towatch whileIwaitedformy brotogetoff work."
'Yes. Indeed, definitely a business of...ill repute.' Rose concluded.
Chris's past was both unsettling, and utterly fascinating.
Currently, Rose was working with the theory that Chris's personality was the result of very traumatizing events during his childhood, (of which he had happily described a dozen in the past ten minutes), that had then been heavily repressed, and forgotten. Though her favourite psychologist, Dr. Sigmund Freud had most of his theories about repressed experiences in childhood brushed off by modern psychologists, Chris was practically one of his theoretical cases come to life. The sheer level of strange and illegal things that went on in his neighbourhood was mind-boggling.
As she was able to discern, there were man-eating rats in the lobby of his (condemned) apartment building, his brother was most likely a drug-dealer, who had Mafia-types break into his apartment, looking for him, on several consecutive occasions. Also, a young Chris had apparently witnessed several shootings in the street outside his house, and stabbings were extremely frequent in the area. His brother didn't appear to even be aware of Chris's existence, as he was usually...intoxicated, or otherwise indisposed.
All in all, Rose was amazed that Chris was so irrepressibly chipper and happy.
Unmindful of it all, Chris continued to ramble, this time talking about the time he found a cool clubhouse inside the local laundromat.
Though she was quite interested in psychoanalyzing him on the spot, and trying to see just how deep that metaphorical rabbit-hole went, Rose knew that there were many far more important things to be done. She still needed to research the Green Sun, figure out how to fight Jack Noir, make sure John succeeded in bringing Jade into the medium, and win the snark war against Kanaya.
Then, as she was pondering how she would go about this, she glanced at Chris. He had mentioned becoming a god-tier...Perhaps he could prove to be useful...
"Say, Chris, you mentioned sucessfully ascending to God-tier, did you not?" She asked, breaking the boy out of his chattering.
"Yep!" he declared, smiling,
"Well, I have critical research to do on this planet," Rose said, speaking to him as she would to an eight-year old. "I'll have to leave for a while, But I'm just not sure what to do with you..." She trailed off, knowing he would take the blatantly obvious bait,
"CANIcometoo? Thatsoundssocool" Chris asked eagerly,
Rose smiled, "Certainly you can,"
Chris grinned, stood, drew a sword, and holding it aloft, declared that this would be the greatest adventure ever!
Smiling slightly despite herself, Rose stood aswell, captchaloguing her wands as she did so, and motioning for Chris to follow, walked to the door.
Opening it, and stepping out onto the shining beaches of her planet, the Land of Light and Rain, she equipped her Hubtopband headset, and drew her wands. Turning to Chris, she asked, "God-tiers are capable of flight, correct?"
"Yeah!" Chris declared, "Imthebestever atflying!Icaneven doitbetterthan Evanit'ssocool!"
"Excellent." She continued, "In that regard, simply follow me,"
With that, she charged black majjyks within her wands, and using the harnessed power blasted into the sky. Chris waited for a moment, then followed.
As she flew, Rose thought about the new arrival on her world, and of what this would mean for the future of the session...
A/N: So, timeline-wise, things are going to be a bit weird... Chris is hanging out with rose near the beginning of ACT 5 Act 2, just after she prototypes most of her stuff. Evan, meanwhile, shows up on Dave's planet at an...as of yet undetermined point in time, and Chester will show up on Jade's world, almost immediately after she enters the medium. The problem with this, is that Jade enters the medium about halfway through ACT 5, and we are currently somewhere near the beginning. In this fic, however, the Chris and Chester chapters will be happening at the same time, which, since they likely will never run into one another in person, hopefully wont be too much of a problem. Still, if the timey-winey shenanigans are confusing to you, then you can just pretend that Evan and Chester enter the session at points in the future, and the timeline continues as normal.
Anyway, I really hope you guys enjoy what I have planned for ACT II of this fic.
Thank you for reading.