The Earth time is six twelve on a Friday evening, and the Alternian sun is just beginning to rise. Terezi Pyrope is in her hive, because over the Earth weekend her only plans are to not get killed by the unrelenting sun.

She is in her respiteblock, arranging all her scalemates according to scent, trying to decide who should be last in line, Prince Puceclaw or Sir Spicyprongs, when her ears perk at the sound of a peculiar scratching noise, echoing from somewhere in her hive. A slurp of the clock on her computer dashboard tells her it is still much too early for the broods of the undead to have reached her hive yet, as they spend the dark nights hidden deep in the sandy deserts, and there are no deserts where she lives. They usually only manage to make their way through the forest near the end of the day, thus, the scratching at her door, no doubt, is unlikely to be one.

Still, she arms herself to the fangs with nooses and heavy throwing things and her trusty cane before venturing downstairs, pausing beside her door to steel herself. A sniff around the edges of the door reveals the guest to be someone she knows. Scent alone, however, is not enough to reveal whether he is a friend or a foe.

She throws open the door, poised to strike, and he, too, is in a defensive position. Neither move as they speak.

"Hey, Gamzeez," says she, her grey knuckles whitening under her grip on her cane.

"Terezi," he says, voice barely a rumble of sound.

They stand for several minutes, staring each other down. Terezi can smell the bright scent of recently shed blood on his breath, and Gamzee admires the way her clothes are twisted around her, evidence of a recent floor nap.

"I'm not letting you in my hive," she says. "That would be stupid as well as suicidal."

"Hey, I'm not asking," he shrugs. "But I am gonna point out that the sun is coming up, here, pretty soon."

"Wow, I didn't know you could tell time," she hisses, glancing around. The trees around her hive are thick, and the sun is not visible yet, but the dense foliage will offer minimal protection from the sun's harsh rays, soon. "How did you even get here, you live by the stupid ocean."

He shrugs again, and she grinds her teeth. Of course, she knows better than to ask him serious questions. Not when he is trying to get something from her.

"Well, you're not coming in. You can just fry out there, for all I care," she says, but she makes no move to close the door.

He steps forward, just a little. "Terezi," he says.

She turns away, crossing her arms.

"Tereziii..."

She tips her head to the side, still facing away. "Oh, is someone there? It must not be someone I want to talk to, or they would already be inside."

He takes that as his cue to come in, so he does, slamming the door behind him. Without a word or so much as a glance back, Terezi starts up the stairs back to her block.

Gamzee grins, deciding not to tell her there is scalemate stuffing in her hair.

The time is three-thirty on a Saturday afternoon when John Egbert, Human non-extrodinaire, pulls his extra-terrestrial friend, Karkat Vantas, through his front door.

"My Dad is at work, so we have the house all to ourselves," John says, excitedly shoving Karkat down onto his couch. "Don't ask me what he does, because I'm not supposed to say, or even know, I think."

"I wasn't going to, because I couldn't care less," Karkat says, standing up again. "Knowing your man-Lusus thing isn't here is supposed to mean what, exactly?"

"Well," John ticks off the list on his fingers, "we can be as loud as we want, eat whatever we want, go to bed whenever we want, watch whatever we want..."

"Watch whatever?" Karkat asks, a hint of excitement coloring his voice, "I can't wait to see what your Human Steve Wilkos is like."

John laughs, leading the way to his kitchen. "Funny! But I already told you what the plan is: Ghostbusters one and two, then the Breakfast Club, the Goonies, Ghost, Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, then maybe Little Shop of Horrors?"

Karkat groans, sticking his head in the oven. Not because he is attempting to use suicide as a form of humor, but because he has no idea what an oven is. "Your human movie titles are so frustrating. Like, 'is this movie terrible? I don't know! I guess I'll have to actually watch this crap to see, instead of just skimming the title like a normal person'. To be safe, I'll just assume they all are terrible, and move on to the part where I suggest we watch something actually worth my time."

John laughs, pulling a packet of Pop-Secret out of a cupboard and throwing it in the microwave. "Calm down. You're going to love Rick Moraines, just you wait. Steve Martin, too; he makes a surprisingly good evil dentist, even though in real life I think he's probably pretty nice. But Ghostbusters first. Maybe you'll even find it enlightening."

Karkat rolls his eyes, not sure what many of the things his friend mentioned are. A dentist, he thinks, is obviously some sort of professional fighter or something. Someone who dents things. A dentist, by that definition, can only be evil to begin with. He rolls his eyes and wonders exactly what horrors John's Human culture have in store for him.

"Karkat, you're not supposed to eat the burnt ones."

"The black ones? But they taste better."

"Okay, more for me, I guess."

The time is five o'clock when Karkat, who is just beginning to grasp the many buttons on a TV remote, pauses the movie, only a fraction of the way through Ghostbusters.

"This doesn't make sense," he says loudly, because he says most things loudly.

"What do you mean?" Says John through a mouthful of popcorn. "The demon lord Gozer is in Dana's fridge. She went to the Ghostbusters, but Venkman is too distracted by her charms to do his experiments right."

"Who's the Egbertish-looking thing in the hallway?"

"Har har, that's Rick Moraines, the guy I was telling you about. He's just her neighbor, but he's gonna be important later."

The boys sit in silence then. John is staring at the frozen screen, on which Venkman, Stantz and Spengler are toasting their first customer, and Karkat is digging through the bowl of popcorn, looking for more burnt pieces.

John says, after a long moment, "Hey, Karkat?"

"Yes, Egbert?"

"You haven't been trolling us much since we did the whole culture clash thing."

"Your point, Egbert?"

"I was just thinking, could you still do it? I mean, if you had to."

Karkat sits up fully, looking John in the eye. "What are you saying? Are you saying I don't have what it takes anymore?"

"Not at all!" John protests. "Well, sort of. I mean, I was talking about it with Rose the other day and she thinks your inspiration, or whatever, is lost now that we're all friends."

Karkat stands up very suddenly, scattering popcorn all over the floor. "I will have you know, John Human Egbert, that I am just as capable, nay, more capable than ever, of the most fear-inspiring trolling any Human has ever experienced. It's in my fucking race's name for Human Pete's sake."

John laughs, crossing his arms. "Prove it, then."

"Prove it?" Karkat laughs until he snorts. "Is that a dare? You know how I feel about dares."

John stands too, then picks up the phone, a heavy rotary-style one, and hands it to Karkat. "I'm gonna call Rose, and if you can troll her good and hard, I'll never doubt your skills again."

Karkat glares. "Just this once, I'm going to forgive your idiocy. You are clearly suffering some sort of psychotic break. I don't have to prove anything to you, Egbert."

John starts dialing. "Hey, I'm just the messenger. It was Rose who said it, tell her. In fact, show her. You know she only believes cold, hard facts."

Karkat glares, holding the phone, while John listens to the receiver.

"Miss Lalonde, ma'am? Yes, I would like to speak to Rose, please, if she's in." he grins at Karkat, putting the receiver against his chest. "You ready?"

"Give me that thing," Karkat snarls, snatching the phone away. He puts it to his ear, listens a moment, then says, "Rose, I Human love you. I feel this Human emotion so strongly that I want to Human marry you, and be the Human father of your Human offspring. Our Human wedding will be beautiful, and we will release seven Human thousand feathery Earth shit factories into the Earth sky to commemorate the event, and our Human honeymoon will be on the Earth moon in a glass mansion, and we will live there for ten Human days and seven Alternian nights, which is like eight of your Human days, I think? Our Human love is a universal constant, as I will tell you ceaselessly as we stare at the Human stars and make our Human love so passionately that our ancestors will weep golden tears at the sheer beauty of it."

He hangs up abruptly. Then, handing the phone back to John, says, "You may now begin kissing my ass in apology."

John laughs, putting the phone back on the end table. "Yeah, you sure showed me. Let's finish the movie, okay?"

Karkat slumps back onto the couch. "Not without more hot black corn. It was the one thing making this crap bearable."

John rolls his eyes but obligingly heads for the kitchen. Karkat stares at the frozen scene on the screen for a moment, and is startled by the sharp, tinny ring of the phone beside him.

"What?" he snaps, having answered without thinking.

"How much do you love me?"

The voice is Rose's, but Karkat doesn't betray his surprise. "So much," he says instantly. He is on a roll, he decides. "Come with me. We'll run away and... what do you call it? The thing where you get married?"

"Elope," she says coolly.

"Yeah, that. Let's Human elope. Pack your things and meet me at Doc's Monday after school, and I'll take you places your inferior Human think pan couldn't even imagine. Pink sand and white skies. Green seas and orange clouds. Yellow trees and purple clover. Trust me, you won't regret it."

"Is this in earnest?" She asks after a moment. "Are you serious, or is this about what I told John to tell you I said?"

"Oh, I'm serious," Karkat says, twirling his finger around the curly cord of the phone. "I'm as serious as this Human doucheface I'm staring at right now, Peter Venkman. Just like he was serious about starting his own bullshit ghost business, I'm serious about this. Human marry me, Rose, and I'll make you the happiest Human female either of us has ever met."

She hangs up then, and Karkat shrugs. John comes back with one bowl of popcorn and one of burnt cinders, they finish their movie, move on to the next, and eventually fall asleep on the couch sometime in the middle of the Goonies.

The Earth time is six twelve on a Saturday evening, and Terezi is on the floor of her block, surrounded by her beloved stuffed dragons. Under normal circumstances, this would make her happy.

She is not happy.

Part of her unhappiness is because of her computer. It is chiming every few moments, meaning someone, or several someones, are trying to get her attention. She tries to ignore it, but the only distraction she has at hand is Gamzee, who is the other part of her unhappiness, as he is biting her tongue in a way she does not particularly like. She likes less, however, the idea of telling him that. This is because of the last time she told him about something that bothered her. She had said, "Ugh, I hate it when people just come over unannounced," and, well, here he is.

The computer is still chiming.

Instead of saying anything, she hopes to aggravate him more then he can her. She scores his sides, under his shirt, with her long nails. She can smell just a hint of his blood, under all the Faygo on his breath, and grins, bringing a knee up to press against his newly wounded side. He responds by grabbing her wrist, tight, tight, and she can feel the calcium rods shifting under his awesome strength. She shivers, remembering how he had broken all the bones in Nepeta's arm easily, during one of the many roleplaying sessions they had acted out. She remembers the sound, the muffled snap, as his hand squeezes her wrist ever tighter.

She licks him, a slow, breathy lick up the underside of his tongue, and then pulls back and punches him, hard, really hard, square in the cheek.

He growls, staring down at her as his blood starts to color his new bruise. He is wondering when she is going to do something about the computer, which is beginning to chime in time with his heart, which is beating only slightly faster than usual. As a highblood, his body is naturally programmed to last for eons, and so it takes a lot to up his heart rate. Terezi doesn't know, can't know, how fast she can get it beating just with a single grin.

She reaches up, tongue poking out of her mouth, cupping his jaw in her hand, sliding her palm up until she can reach his newborn bruise with her thumb, jabbing at it with her claw. He only smiles and says, "I thought you said you wanted to talk."

"I said no such thing," she hisses, grabbing fistfuls of his hair, winding it around her fingers. His hands are like bruises on her skin, hot and strong, they feel like her cheeks when she blushes. She did blush, she is blushing, and she touches her cheek tenderly, hand still wrapped up, almost expecting to feel the burn of them on her hand, like an orange coil on a stove.

"Well, what are we doing, here," he says softly, pulling gently against her tugging hands. "You don't do meaningless quadrants, right?"

She frowns; the chiming is driving her mad. "I thought we just established I didn't want to talk."

So he grins and kisses her, drawing her up in his arms, and she scrapes her teeth against his, claws dragging up his arms until they are warm with blood close to the surface. The chiming of the computer is incessant, and soon they have had enough.

Terezi groans and pries her tongue off of Gamzee's, and Gamzee groans and pries his hips off of Terezi's, and they both groan the kind of groan only a teenager encumbered with unexpected chores is capable of.

"Who," Terezi says, lying on the floor, eyes shut tight, "the fuck."

Gamzee, now straddling her, leans over to her desk, peering at her smeared screen.

"Vriska, Eridan," he says, mousing over the flashing names, "...and Tavros."

Terezi sighs, propping herself up on her elbows. "I'm busy. Tell them I'm busy."

"Busy?" he grins, taking the opportunity to take a swig of one of the many open bottles of Faygo lying around Terezi's respiteblock. "Certainly, your Tyrrany. And what shall I say you're so busy doing?"

She growls at him, more teeth than noise.

He nods, then begins typing, speaking the words as he writes them, "Sorry, can't talk right now, I'm all getting my motherfuckin' chill on with a motherfucker who ain't y-"

Terezi, in an incredible display of strength, pulls herself up from the floor and slaps him, drawing blood.

He laughs and he kisses her, and she bites him, and then pulls herself out from under him and knees him in the face, but not very hard, on her way to her computer.

Her glasses are on her desk, beside the model volcano she had made for a school project the year before. She hadn't gotten a very good grade on it, probably because of the clay figures that dotted the volcano's sides, falling prey to the replica lava that poured out the top.

She turns to her computer, but it is hard for her to make out the words on the screen, due to all the Faygo in her system. The scents are overpowering, so she has to resort to licking the screen.

AG: Terezi I'm so sorry!
AG: Terezi?
AG: Terezi, don't ignore me!
AG: Tereziiiiiiii...
GC: SORRY, C4N'T T4LK R1GHT NOW, 1M 4LL G3TT1ING MY MOTH3RFUCK1N CH1LL ON W1THLKHLKJ
AG: Huh?
GC: N3V3RM1ND
GC: WH4T 4R3 YOU SORRY FOR, VR1SK4, BE1NG 4 B1TCH?
GC: 1T'S 4BOUT T1M3
AG: No, idi8, I'm not apologizing to you, I'm apologizing for him!
GC: H1M WHO?
AG: Karkat, of course! ::::o
GC: WH4T
GC: WH4T 4R3 YOU T4LK1NG 4BOUT?
AG: I just heard! Apparantly he's le8ving you for that human, Rose!

"No," Terezi says under her breath. Behind her, Gamzee is peeling off his shirt. She can smell his cuts, like the inside of an oven, all hot and salty.

GC: YOUR D3SP3R4T1ON 1S P4TH3T1C.
AG: I'm serious! He proposed to her over the phone!
GC: WH4TS TH4T?
AG: It's a human thing I think, where one asks the oth8r to be m8sprits for the rest of their lifespans.
AG: So I guess you're down a quad8, huh?
AG: You know, I never told you this, 8ut I think the two of us would make a gr8 team, don't you?
GC: 1
GC: WH4T
AG: Come on! Don't you remem8er how much fun we had last summer? If we teamed up, we could 8e unstoppa8le!
GC: WH4T DO YOU W4NT NOW, VR1SK4?
GC: YOU M4Y B3 POPUL4R ON 34RTH W1TH TH3 HUM4NS, BUT 1 C4N SM3LL THROUGH YOUR L13S, R3M3MB3R?
AG: If that's true, then you should know that I'm telling the truth!
GC: 4LL 1 C4N SM3LL 1S YOU TRY1NG TO G3T ON MY GOOD S1D3. YOU FORG3T, NON3 OF MY S1D3S 4R3 GOOD.
GC: 1'M TOO BUSY FOR YOUR BULLSH1T R1GHT NOW. S33 YOU MOND4Y.

Terezi sighs, sinking to her knees, grabbing a half-flat Faygo on the way down and draining it in one gulp. She pulls off her glasses and then her shirt, wincing as she feels the cool air hit the raised skin along her scratches and bites. She suddenly feels very tired.

The trouble is, Vriska's words don't smell anything like lies. They smell suspiciously like the truth, and it is a truth Terezi doubts she can handle.

Karkat? And Rose?

Impossible.

Sensing the change in mood, Gamzee grabs her by the wrist, dragging her away from her computer, outside of her block itself, and into the hallway outside. He pins her against the door and he presses his forehead to hers and he twirls a lock of her hair around his fingers.

"I liked you better when I hated you," he whispers, and when her tears begin to fall he lets her take the lead, and she kisses him bruisingly, and he encourages her to take out her feelings on him, and the Earth time is four o'clock on Monday morning when she at last has calmed down, and she wakes up in time for school bruised and alone, for even Gamzee has left her alone.