Karkat stomped down the street, hauling his groceries. He still wasn't exactly sure how Yen converted to Alternian Caegars, but he was pretty sure he was being robbed. And then that moron at the cash register had the gall to get upset when he drew the Cancer symbol on the "sign here" line. What the hell had he been expecting from him.

Karkat's attention was drawn to a commotion in a nearby alleyway. Some douchebags had surrounded a pair of girls, and seemed to be demanding cash from them or something. It wasn't his problem. Until one of them screamed for help. One of the thugs punched her, but the damage was done. If he didn't help now, he was an accomplice. And Karkat had better things to do than go to jail. Misaka was planning on introducing him to her friends today, and he didn't want to upset her by being late.

Karkat sighed as he knocked the heads of the two thugs closest to him together, knocking both unconscious. He ducked to dodge the swing of an iron pipe, and countered with an uppercut that knocked its wielder flat onto the ground. He turned to the remaining two chumps, only to see that one of the dunkasses was pointing a gun at him. He rolled his eyes and captchalogued the pipe rolling along the ground, launching a chair out of his sylladex. The chair splintered and broke to pieces as it crashed into the gunman, who fell still. Damn. He loved that chair.

Karkat gritted his teeth as the pieces of the chair floated up into the air, with the pointy splinters facing towards him. Goddammit. Of course the one guy he hadn't taken out was a telekinetic. Level two or three by the look of strain on his face. The douche hurled all the fragments of the chair at him. Karkat responded by running straight at the largest piece and using it as a stepstool to launch himself over the debris. his foot collided with the Esper's face with the satisfying crack of his nose breaking.

"Easier than a shitty imp with Sollux's prototyping," muttered Karkat as he walked back to the entry of the alleyway, dropped the shitty pipe, and captchalogued the groceries in his newly free captcha card. He began making his way down the street towards Tokiwadai, but was stopped when one of the girls, who had short hair with some arrangement of flowers in it, he helped called after him.

"Um...thank you!"

Karkat rolled his eyes. "Whatever."

The other girl, who had long hair, stood in front of him and poked him square in the chest.

"Listen, you helped us out, so we'll treat you to a meal."

Karkat sighed. "Listen, I'm in a hurry right now. I've got someone waiting on me, and she's gonna be seriously pissed if I'm late."

The girl in the headband turned to her friend.

"Saten-san, stop bothering him! You don't want to make him late for his date!"

Saten gave a shocked and embarrassed glance back and forth between her friend and Karkat, then bowed, slightly flustered.

"I'm so sorry! Please, you should go!"

Karkat pondered his situation for a few seconds, and then responded.

"Actually, it's just my neighbor trying to get me to fucking socialize. She thinks that by introducing me to her friends, she can get me to come out of my shitty loner shell. Hell, why not, I'll go with you guys. Her friends are probably all douchebags anyways."

"Eh?"

"So let me get this fucking straight. You decided to walk through back alleyways on your own. Why in the everloving FUCK would you choose to do that!? Have you never even heard of the concept of muggings!?"

"Of course I have! But I also heard this rumor about a serial killer who roams the back alleys of Academy City! They call him the Car-"

"Of course! Because that makes so much goddamn sense! Not only are you walking through the most likely location for a crime to occur, you did so because you wanted to see a FUCKING SERIAL KILLER!?"

"Eh!? Saten-san, you didn't tell me that!" yelled Uiharu, shocked.

Saten just smiled and waved off the questions. "Relax, it's just an urban legend! Just a bit of harmless fun!"

Karkat performed the famous facepalm x2 combo. "As one who has actually had his best friend go completely shithive maggots and try to murder him and all his friends, I would firmly group serial killers in the 'not fun' category of things! But what the fuck do I know?"

Karkat's phone rang, and he answered it.

"Yeah, I ditched you. Just figuring that out now? What was that you said about being at the top of your class?"

"..."

"Well, after I beat the shit out of some group of thugs, these two girls offered to treat me to a meal for helping them out."

"!"

"Yeah, I know. I figured your friends would be douchebags anyway, so I decided to go with them, because they seemed reasonably okay."

"..."

"All alone with her? I thought you said you had more than one friend."

Saten felt a feeling of dread settling in the pit of her stomach as she began connecting the dots.

"!"

"Jegus fuck Mikoto, no need to scream my eardrum out."

"..."

"Oh, I- hold on just a motherfucking second. Can you repeat those names?"

"..."

"No, not Kuroko. I've heard that name enough to remember it. Those other douchebags you mentioned."

"..?"

"God fucking dammit."

Karkat pulled the phone away from his ear.

"Sorry for inadvertently calling you two douchebags. Seriously, I'm such a collossal fuckup."