Chapter 35

== Be Karkat

Karkat had taken off school today to go to Nepeta's funeral. He couldn't help but wonder why they decided to hold it on a Monday. Most of Nepeta's friends went to high school. He'd been told that Sollux died yesterday, and they made an announcement on the news that another student had been killed. Karkat didn't know him all that well, just that he had been paralyzed by the b**** Vriska.

But today's funeral wasn't for either of them. He knew he was going to go to Sollux's too, but he hadn't decided if he wanted to go to the other kid's funeral. Too many funerals, and he wouldn't have time for them all. He sighed as he straightened his tie in the mirror. The shirt was white, but the tie was black, as well as the suit and pants. His hair wasn't messed up today, unlike normal. He didn't look bad, but he didn't care. When he met his eyes in the mirror, he saw no emotion. Blank, dull, numb. They even looked blacker than normal. Normally a dark brown, almost black, they were so dark now that the pupil couldn't be told apart from the iris. He had a soulless look on his face as he fixed his hair.

"C'mon Karkat." The soft voice of his dad brought him down from depressing thoughts. "It's time to go."

Kankri looked up from the couch apologetically. He wouldn't be going. Karkat was somewhat grateful for that, but it would've been nice to have his brother at his side.

They walked out the door, got in the car, and were off. His father didn't say a word. He turned on the radio to a news station. Karkat zoned out, not really listening. Until one reporter started talking about something close to home.

"…recent hashing of murders in the City of [insert name of a generic suburb]. No one knows who the perpetrator is, but the police are working hard to find suspects. The victims were all young children, still in high school. Make sure your child stays safe, and that they stay away from dark alleys. It seems they've all happened when the victim is alone. Stay indoors as much as possible, the police—"

Karkat turned off the radio. His father glanced over at him, eyes full of pity. Karkat frowned, looking away. He didn't want to listen to that, and he wouldn't accept pity. He already knew that he was a suspect in the police's eyes. If he was near any more murders, no matter if he had a gun with him or not, they would probably hold him in the station.

He sighed as they came to the funeral home. Today would be a long day.

==Be Meulin

Are you kidding me? Don't you want to hear what happens with Karkat?

==No, be Meulin

Fine. But just because of that, I'm skipping over the funeral.

Meulin arrived at her home after the funeral. There had been more people there than she had expected. Apparently these murders were attracting the attention of the community. People were afraid of this murderer becoming a serial killer, and everyone was afraid for their children.

She sighed as she walked into Nepeta's room. She glanced around at the posters on the walls, and the drawings strewn everywhere. It still smelled of her. Her eyes landed on Nepeta's laptop. She walked to it purposefully and sat on the bed, opening it up. She looked through the icons and opened up Sburb. It required a login, so she clicked sign up. Why a computer game with a disc had this kind of feature, she didn't know. She just shrugged and created a new account.

She chose troll, of course, and made the hair long. She tried to change the color, but for some reason couldn't. She moved on, and chose cat-like horns. They were very customizable; it seemed she could even choose sizing and proportion.

She kept them as they were and chose a cat-like mouth, with long incisors. For clothes she chose a black long sleeved with a collar underneath an olive green short sleeved shirt. She also got a black pleated mini-skirt with a blue tail in the back. She also chose long socks, ones that reached up slightly past her knees. They were a slightly lighter shade of olive green. For some reason, she couldn't change her eyes from the blank white that they were, although she saw there were a couple of options for eyes. She could change the shape, at least. She clicked next and was given a black Leo symbol for her shirt. Then it just passed her into the game. No username? She wondered at that. She was dropped into a large clearing surrounded on all sides by trees. She looked around in amazement. Out of all the games she'd played, this was by far the most detailed.

Every blade of grass looked real. The trees looked randomly spaced, and there were even clumps of wildflowers. She crouched down on the ground to zoom in on the grass when another player suddenly walked in from the woods. It was another troll, with hair that was black and tipped in red. He had on a black jacket with small bones on it, over top a red shirt and another black shirt over top of that. The black shirt had a bronze Taurus symbol. He had on long pants with red horizontal stripes. His horns stretched wide from his head, and he had light brown transparent wings extending from his back.

unknownUser01 wants to troll you. Accept? Yes / No

Unknown user? What did that mean? She clicked accept.

UU01: do you understand the po1nt of th1s game?

UU02: (\=^ w ^=/) nope!

UU01: and why the hell are we both unknown users?

UU02: (;^._.^) I have no idea, but can you hang on fur a second? Something came up on my scr33n.

She clicked the pop up and read.

To All Unknown Users:

You have created an account on an in session disc. This is only possible if the original players have entered the game. As a result, you too will enter the game, but in a special level. This level consists of several pockets of memory, and is called the Dream Bubble Level. Your goal is to find all 12 unknown users within the Dream Bubble. Only then can you access the normal game.

Suddenly Meulin's character was in a new place. It was still woods, but she could see an old dark purple castle in one direction. In the opposite direction, perhaps just as far away, was a golden yellow castle. She saw no end to the strange looking blue trees with pink leaves, but for the cliffs she was on at the moment. There was an old pavilion at the end of the cliffs with stairs leading up and down to several different levels. She stepped toward it to explore when she realized the troll she had met earlier was suddenly no longer with her. That didn't make sense; he had been an unknown user too. He was probably in this Dream Bubble thing too, somewhere. She didn't even know where to begin to look.

She shrugged and stepped into the forest. Best place to start looking was in front of her. As she walked through the forest she noticed different types of forest randomly converging and blending with different types of ground. She looked up and saw a system of ropes and ladders in the trees. She climbed up to get a better view of the area and quickly reached the top. She looked around and saw that on the other side of the forest was an area for what looked like homes. Beyond that she thought she saw an ocean, and several beaches and small islands. She saw something even further beyond that, what looked like another land mass. She couldn't make out any details of it, except that it looked dark.

She sighed and pushed away from the screen. This level was huge; she would never be able to find her way around here. She logged off and walked downstairs to sit on the couch.

"How was it?" Jade asked from the other room. She was fixing up some deer she and Nepeta had caught together. She hadn't gone to the funeral.

"It was beautiful, and yet horrible. It was very sad and quiet, but also happy and boisterous, like she would've wanted." She texted to Jade's phone. She saw Jade pick it up a few seconds later.

"I should've gone." Jade was facing Meulin and she could see her from the window cut into the wall of the kitchen.

Meulin sat down at the small bar on the other side of the window.

"I can understand why you didn't go. Don't regret your decision." She sent.

"Hey, Meulin? Can you teach me sign language?"

She smiled, with a touch of sadness in her eyes. "Of course. First the alphabet. This is A." She made a fist with her hand, with the thumb sticking up on the side. "B" She made a flat vertical hand with the thumb crossing over the palm. "C" She circled her hand, with four fingers on top making the upper half of a c, and the thumb making the bottom half. This continued until she went through the entre alphabet.

"The alphabet can be used for small words and names, so it's pretty useful. Practice that for now, and then I'll teach you some words."

Jade smiled and went over them with her hands. "I finished lunch."

"I'm not really hungry. I think I'll just go read manga or something in my room."

"Alright. See you later."

Meulin headed back to her room and sat on the edge of her bed. She lay back and stared up at the blank ceiling. She reflected on her memories of Nepeta. Some were happy, some sad, and some were just them sitting together watching their favorite animes.

She sighed. She would really miss Nepeta, but she was so used to death she didn't even cry. Not one tear. She remembered at Mother's funeral, they both were sobbing and clinging to each other like their lives depended on it. And at the time it seemed like they did. All the people with their insufficient condolences just made them cry even harder.

She closed her eyes. She didn't want to think about that. Especially when—No. She wouldn't think it.

Meulin sat up and went back to Nepeta's room. She brought the laptop into her room and went on it again. If there were twelve unknowns, couldn't she just chat them all one by one, using the chat finder? She hurried to log in and found herself in the same place she had begun yesterday, as if she hadn't done any exploring at all. She frowned, but shrugged as she looked at the chat finder thing on the side. Maybe she forgot to save. It had only two other people in the roster, but it wouldn't let her click either one. Was the chat disabled? She tried the area chat, and that seemed like it was working.

UU01: (/.^=) anyone out there?

UU01: (=^.\) anyone at all?

UU03: Y32 1 1,M H343R.

UU01: (\=^w^=/) yay! where are mew?

UU03: 1 D0N'7 UND3R2744444ND!11?/!

UU01: (^._ .^) what don't mew understand?

UU03: L34V3 M3 4L0N3!1!1 1 D0N'7 N0 H0W Y0U 4R31!

UU01: (^T . T^) I don't know why you're saying that, but I'm going.

UU03: L34V3 M3 4L0000N33!111!1

Meulin minimized the chat and sat back in her seat. Who in the world was that? She shrugged and decided to explore the cliffs. As she walked towards the pavilion, through the mist she thought she saw a figure. She squinted and cursed under her breath to the mist.

"What is…?" The mist cleared dramatically and she saw a man in a skin-tight suit with bones in the places they would fall in the human body. It covered his entire body, excluding for his face, and he wore purple shorts on the outside of the suit, as well as boots of the same color that went up to his knees. On his face was clown-like make-up that accented his facial bones, making a white skull that eerily stood out from the strange gray skin. His hair was messed up and long. A lot of it was sticking it straight up, defying gravity.

She knew instantly who it was: Kurloz.

As soon as she thought that, he smiled and disappeared. She heard an almost too quiet to hear 'honk' issued from the speakers, but that must've been her imagination…right?

A/R: Edit 2: Is it creepy? I tried to make it creepier than it was…