The first night, Jaya had a nightmare. She was screaming about something chasing her, but then by the time Karkat woke her up, she couldn't remember and had a nasty headache. A few minutes later, she was asleep again. Vriska had walked in then, asking if she could help the young human sleep better. Karkat said hell no and she walked off, probably with a smug expression. Karkat didn't want to leave, either, just in case.

For the next week or so, Jaya stayed in her room, Kanaya coming in to check on her in the mornings. One day, she sees Karkat collapsed over the mattress, snoring like a large mammal, Jaya still sleeping somehow. She wakes him up quietly, and brings him to the other room.

"What do you think?" Kanaya asks.

"I think I'm glad Meenah isn't here to tease the pink kid," Karkat says. "What'll this do to our resources?"

"It does not make that much of a difference. With eleven less mouths to feed, it is actually no trouble at all." Kanaya sighs.

"Still hung up over Porrim?" Not that Karkat can blame her. Like her ancestor, Porrim was the only other troll Karkat could stand. He appreciated her because she took care of Kankri when he was being, well… Kankri.

"Yes," she answers simply. And that was that.

Your name is Jaya, you think. You made up your name when you came to live on the island. It's been a few weeks and you think you're going to like it here. There is so much space to run around! Maybe she'll even catch a squirrel! Today, though, you're going to learn about everyone. Whatever that means.

"We have to tell her we're not human," Sollux suggested yesterday. Karkat is not looking forward to that. What if she's afraid of them? She'll die from starvation if she won't let anyone near her. Worse, she'll jump off one of the many cliffs that this island has and then they'll be responsible because they're the ones that brought her here.

"Karkat, you are sweating like it is the middle of the summer solstice," Kanaya said to him quietly.

"I volunteer Eridan to give her the shock factor," Sollux went on.

"What the fuck, Sol?" Eridan yelled, offended. "Is that why you suggested this fish-brained idea?"

"Maybe." Sollux obviously couldn't contain himself.

"Let's put a damper on the black advances, both of you," Karkat growled. A surge of jealousy pulsed in him every time Sollux pulled this shit with Eridan. Karkat shot a glare at Kanaya, who stepped in to pap Sollux out of his infidelity. Karkat is convinced Sollux does that on purpose just to piss him off. "I fucking hate you," Karkat grumbled. Sollux shrugs it off.

"I think we have to tell her eventually," Kanaya cut in, "and the sooner, the better."

So today, it's going to happen.

They set up an elaborate display. Anatomy, an Alternian map, a graphic organizer of the castes, et cetera, et cetera. Everyone sits in chairs in the living block, shooting the shit even though they just spoke a few minutes ago. Even Nepeta is here. Karkat slouches in his chair with his arms crossed, as far away as possible from Sollux and Eridan. Kanaya then enters with the small human, both holding hands. They take the available seats and Kanaya starts her spiel.

"Welcome again to Alternia Mansion. As you may have noticed, everyone here is special." No shit? "If we could, let's all introduce ourselves. My name is Kanaya Maryam."

Karkat is next. "Karkat Vantas."

"Nepeta Leijon!"

"Eridan Ampora."

"Vriska Serket…"

"Sollux Captor," he pronounces especially slow. "And thith little wriggler in my arm ith Aradia Megido. She'th my… daughter." Only Karkat knew it, but that pause was legitimate confusion because he couldn't remember the human word for "descendant". For god's sake, why did he Sollux bring her anyway? This is an adult meeting. Besides, do they even have to distinguish male and female? Just describe them the way they are: a descendant. No political correctness to be found.

"Are you guys aliens?" Jaya asks right off the bat.

Vriska can't contain it anymore. This child entertains her to no end. At the very least, she now she has a human toy to practice with on the regular. She starts laughing. "And you wanted me to break it to her!" In reality, she literally drew the short straw. Her luck had to be low lately, because she really didn't want to. However, she doesn't mind being the antagonist once in a while. It can have its fun moments. She gets up and walks over to Eridan, then grabs a horn, forcing his head side to side.

"Wris!" Eridan yells. "Why can't you do that to Sollux?! He has horns!"

"You're more fun." Sollux would have blasted her anyway. She looks into Jaya's eyes. Vriska can feel the child's curiosity and terror growing simultaneously. "See, kid, these things are horns. They're kind of useless here on your planet so we sand them down." She then crosses the circle of chairs to Karkat and snatches his wrist. She pushes the long sleeve to his elbow. "We're gray colored, too. That's not just a complexion. Well, for the rest of us, it isn't." She tosses his arm back to him.

"Fuck off, Vriska!" Karkat snaps.

"We also have different color blood." She goes to Eridan again, unsheathes her dagger, and gives his cheek a small slice. "This one is royalty because he has purple blood." He'll be fine. The slice heals in a day or so, and it's already clotting. "Kanaya here…" Kanaya raises her lipstick as if to put it on, then gives Vriska an icy glare. "Will probably tell you later." She didn't want to suffer the wrath of the chainsaw today. She meets Jaya's eyes again and sees that she is perfectly scarred for life. Good. She moves on to Sollux, looking him dead in the eye and twirling her weapon.

"Sollux's heterochromia alone will convince you. Aradia and Karkat are not that much different concerning the hue of blood. And as for myself…" She then sheathes the dagger and bends down in front of the small child. She takes off her glasses and shows off the sevenfold. "I can read your mind," she whispers, then smirks. The various yelling at her to leave is music to her ears. She needs to go to work anyway.

One thing that bothers her about the Jaya kid, is that something is blocking out her sevenfold vision. Either the human brain is much more complex than previously thought, or there is trauma that even Vriska cannot penetrate. One of these days, she will get to the bottom of the mystery of Jaya. The self-proclaimed all-powerful hacker Sollux couldn't find anything about her anyway. Unless he's lying. Vriska will have to get right on that.

After that debacle was over, Sollux retired to his room, letting Aradia play outside with the other grubs and the new girl. The way Vriska was looking at him earlier freaked him out. He needs to delete his entire computer before she finds out—

He cut his thought process off. Does Vriska even know how to operate a computer? Probably not. If so, then he could just delete his browser history. Not much she can do after that. He knows how to get the information back, so unless she teaches herself with all that free time she has, he's in the clear. That, and if she ever gets her powers back to the troll frequency…

He rushes to turn on his computer and deletes his browser history.

Aradia didn't feel like going outside today. She felt like exploring what was behind the door in the kitchen. Kanaya said that the mother grub was down there, and she likes her privacy sometimes. Aradia thinks that the mother grub should come out sometimes and play.

"Whatcha doin'?" Aradia sees the big girl, Jaya standing behind her.

"I'm gonna splore," Aradia answers.

"Wanna play hunt and seek?"

"Yeah!" That sounds like a much better plan anyway.

Jaya looks around and stops at the door in the kitchen that leads to the basement. "Okay, here are the rules: don't let Karkat find us. "

"Okay!"

Jaya unlatches it and waves them both in. She closes the door behind them, giggling, "I told him to count to a thousand."

It's Aradia's turn to giggle. A thousand is perhaps the biggest number you can count to. They take turns hushing each other, for fear that they might be found. They scamper to the bottom of the stairs.

Then they hear the buzzing.

Your name is Jaya. Still? You feel like you should get a last name. Anyway…

You hear buzzing in the darkness of the basement. You stop Aradia and fumble around for a light switch. When you turn it on, you see what looks like a giant caterpillar moth thing buzzing about, trying not to bump into things. It's bigger than you, maybe as big as a car. It's pure white with jade highlights on its skin and wings, and it has funny looking horns. Not Eridan funny, but more curved, and one of them has a notch on it.

It stops flying, landing on the ground with a thunk. It turns toward you and Aradia. You take Aradia's hand, not sure what it'll do. Its big, dark eyes meet yours, but you don't feel scared. Not Vriska scared, anyway. It's almost calming.

"Mother grub," Aradia says, pointing.

"Mother grub?"

"Yeah!"

There's something in you that says, "Free Her." You'll ask Kanaya after hunt and seek.

You and Aradia go up and pet the mother grub, who purrs in response. You find that the spot between her horns is a good place to scratch and ruffle the fine fur covering the beast.

"Are you a boy or a girl?" you ask it, not really expecting an answer in English. The mother grub purrs again.

Just then, you hear stomping upstairs. Someone must be in the kitchen. You take Aradia and quickly run past the mother grub and into a pile of clear plastic storage boxes. They are packed to the brim with flat things in it. They kind of look like vinyl records.

A few minutes of absolutely nothing happens. No doors being opened, no Karkat yelling, not even Kanaya checking on the mother grub. The mother grub must be very lonely down here.

"Karkat's not good at this game," Aradia says, coming out of her crouching position beside you. "I'm bored."

"Yeah, me too." You look at the boxes and take one down. You look through the lid and sure enough, they're all vinyl. One of them has Elvis on it. You don't know how you knew who he was, but the name rings a bell. Well, at least you can remember Elvis. You open the box and take out that album. It has Elvis and a dog on it, and it reads "Hound Dog!" You like dogs, so you close the box and keep that one out.

"What's that?" Aradia asks, pointing to the sleeve.

"It's a record. You can listen to it." You hold it out to her.

Aradia takes it and puts it up to her ear. "I can't hear it."

What are you missing? You know you're missing something. "Hmm." You start looking at the other boxes. Then you see what looks like a really thick briefcase. It's weird that they're with all these boxes of records, so you open it. There's a big circle on the left and a couple knobs and a needle arm. You don't know why, but you think this will work. "Aradia?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I see it?" She hands it to you and you take the black disc out. You make sure it's the right side and put it face up. You flip the switch and the disc starts turning. You put the needle carefully on the disc and a song starts playing. You celebrate getting the thing to work by dancing to the music. Aradia starts dancing, too. You pretend you're playing drums every time they get a solo. You sing along because it's the same lyrics over and over. Even the mother grub is joining in on the fun.

You think you're going to really like this place.

The sun is setting and Karkat has no idea where Jaya went. They went to go play hunt and seek hours ago, expecting him to play, but now he's really regretting it because they are now missing in action. He just thought they would get bored and play something else, because Karkat really hates hunt and seek. Whenever he hides, people find him and give away his position. Whenever he seeks, they jump on him and just slow him down. And he's not talking about the new grubs, either.

Calling them grubs isn't really fair because they grew out of their bug-like physique a few months ago. The thing they haven't grown out of is their ear-splitting shrieking.

"Hey Kan, I forgot to tell you," Eridan says as Karkat comes up to Kanaya's block for help. "The basement door in the kitchen's not locked."

"Why did you not lock it when you saw it unhinged?" she asks.

"Cos I heard music comin' from down there, and I'm pretty shore that the mother grub doesn't have phalanges to operate that sorta equipment."

Karkat narrows his eyes. They're down there, aren't they?

"Oh dear, someone must have gotten down there without permission," Kanaya mutters. She gets up and Eridan leaves. She spots Karkat at the other end of the hallway and says, "Oh good, there you are."

"Fuck." The last thing he wanted was to be around any more children today. But since they are in trouble, that means he gets to yell at them. It made him feel only two percent better. Yelling de-stresses him, but at the same time, it's the only way they'll listen. And for once, he'd like to not yell at someone dumber than he is.

They quickly make their way to the basement door, and sure enough, it's unlocked and the music blares as soon as they open it. The song ends, and he can hear Aradia shouting, "Again!" and then laughter. The song starts up again and Karkat leads the way to the basement.

"What in the everloving fuck is happening here?!" Karkat yells. He sidesteps the mother grub, who looked like she was moving to the groove earlier. He doesn't want to be in the way if she trips. He goes right to Jaya and Aradia, who are jumping up and down and doing some kind of crazed ritual dancing. They didn't hear him. "I said…" He waves his arms. "What the hell is going on!"

"Hi Karkat!" Jaya says, turning to the music and turning it off. "We found music!"

"I know you did!"

Kanaya cuts in then. "Why were you down here in the first place?"

"Hunt and seek!" Aradia pipes up.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, Karkat was supposed to find us," Jaya explains. Fuck. Again.

"Oh?" Kanaya now turns to Karkat.

He feels his face flushing with embarrassment and anger.

"Well it cannot be helped now." She sighs and bends down to talk to both girls. "Next time, do not come down here. This is the mother grub's sacred space, and I am the only one who tends to her."

"She looked lonely," Jaya says, looking at the ground. She looks back up with a smile and says, "Plus, she was dancing with us!"

It's Kanaya's turn to smile. Karkat doesn't feel welcome anymore, so he turns to leave. "Don't do it again!" he says before he storms up the stairs.

He's off today. He's been off for a while. And it has to do with a certain jadeblood.