PAST twinArmageddons [PTA] 0:05 HOURS AGO opened private transtimeline bulletin board FUTURE A22HOLE2
CURRENT twinArmageddons [CTA] RIGHT NOW opened memo on board FUTURE A22HOLE2
CTA: let me ju2t 2tart by 2aying,
CTA: ii hope thii2 ii2 what you wanted.
CTA: ii hope you are 2iittiing iin whatever crazy 2hiithole you mu2t have crawled iinto
CTA: and 2hariing 2ome priivate joke between braiin2 about how amaziingly clever you are for haviing ruiined my liife iin every po22iible way.
CTA: great job wiith that encryptiion by the way.
CTA: thiing ii2 a2 2oliid a2 month old behemoth leaviing2. ii don't know whether two be iimpre22ed or ju2t pii22ed off.
CTA: ii'm hoveriing between both thiing2 liike the biipolar piiece of 2hiit ii am.
CTA: feel free two have a chuckle at my expen2e now. 2iince that 2eem2 two be a thiing you do.
CTA: whatever, thii2 ii2 poiintle22.
CTA: ii diidn't come on here two argue wiith future a22hole2 liike your2elf. not that you can really argue 2iince you have barred me from 2peakiing two you iin any way.
CTA: whiich you would be regrettiing now, iif you could 2ee thii2. becau2e ii am about two take your adviice.
CTA: ye2. ii have offiiciially come two thii2 poiint now. ii no longer know what the fuck two do or how two remedy thii2 2hiit2torm ii've 2tiirred up.
CTA: ii would a2k you two iinterject now wiith 2ome kiind of quiip or vague reference two future event2 or even a 2mall expre22iion of miirth.
CTA: but you are obviiou2ly two bu2y beiing a bucket-fuckiing tool two reply two me.
CTA: except that we diidn't even u2e a bucket.
CTA: that'2 riight, ii am now priivy two thii2 iinformatiion.
CTA: don't you want to lord iit over me?
CTA: don't you have any other a22ertatiion2 of future event2 you wii2h two make 2o that ii can diick around tryiing two avoiid them and ultimately faiiliing due two the machiinatiion2 of fate?
CTA: no?
CTA: thii2 ii2 2tupiid.
CTA: ii gue22 maybe ii'm 2talliing now becau2e
CTA: ii don't really want two go through wiith thii2.
CTA: ii ju2t got two thiinkiing about all of thii2 a2 ii 2et iit up.
CTA: ii mean, there ha2 two be a rea2on that tiime ii2n't iin my tiitle.
CTA: and that doom ii2.
CTA: ii ju2t fuck everythiing up.
CTA: thii2 game. everyone ii care about.
CTA: even fii2h 2tiinkiing douchebag2.
CTA: and that'2 what'2 really 2tartiing two 2care the 2hiit out of me ii gue22.
CTA: the fact that ii care at all. iit'2 liike my braiin ii2 workiing two 2abotage me.
CTA: ii'm not 2uppo2ed two keep cariing. that'2 not how iit work2. that'2 never how iit'2 worked.
CTA: and ii gue22
CTA: iif a quadrant ha2 two happen
CTA: iif that ii2 the only po22iible end result from all of thii2 dumb fuckery
CTA: ii'd prefer iif iit ju2t 2tayed black.
CTA: becau2e ii don't feel bad for that a22hole. ii don't feel bad that ii beat hiim and ii don't regret leaviing hii2 2ea dwelliing a22 to rot iin the ablutiion trap.
CTA: god.
CTA: that wa2 2uch a bad iidea though. ii mean, what iin the actual fuck wa2 ii thiinkiing wiith that?
CTA: ii know how fuckiing volatiile ii can be. how diid ii ever come two the conclusiion that dii2couragiing hii2 advance2 via the REMOVAL OF HII2 CLOTHIING wa2 ever goiing to be 2omethiing that would turn up good re2ult2?
CTA: 2ee, iif you weren't 2uch a goddamned moron, future diip2hiit, ii could have warned my2elf of thii2.
CTA: ii could have made 2ome bulletiin board for my pa2t 2elf two 2ee 2imply entiitled DO NOT TAKE ERIIDAN'2 CLOTHE2 OFF
CTA: YOU FUCKIING MORON.
CTA: that would be the entiire board.
CTA: ju2t that.
CTA: twiice.
CTA: two board2 of that.
CTA: and thii2 whole 2iituatiion could have been avoiided.
CTA: and ii wouldn't be 2iittiing here liike 2ome jacka22
CTA: tryiing two make fuckiing amend2.
CTA: that ii2 what you have reduced me two, you 2hiithead.
CTA: tryiing to actually get a black quadrant two work wiith thii2 fuckiing moron
CTA: becau2e ii can't fucking handle the thought of anythiing el2e.
CTA: ii don't want two be an emotiional fuck up.
CTA: and ii don't want him two be okay wiith iit. ii don't want hiim two fuckiing empathiize wiith me.
CTA: ii ju2t want one a2pect of my exii2tence two be normal and mundane. ii2 that 2o much two fuckiing a2k?
CTA: apparently iit ii2.
CTA: well thank2 for all your help, jacka22, that certaiinly cleared the aiir diidn't iit? ii feel 2o much better ii could just fuckiing blow up thii2 lunchtop wiith my rage eye2.
CTA: except ii won't becau2e thii2 i2n't my computer 2o that would be kiind of a diick move.
CTA: but my fury ii2 no le22 valiid in the ab2ence of collateral damage.
CTA: and iif you were here riight now ii would lobotomiize you liike the ape braiined retard that you are.
CTA: that'2 all ii got then ii gue22.
CTA: 2iince you haven't 2tepped iin two 2top me yet, ii'm ju2t goiing two a22ume thii2 i2 what ii have to do.
CTA: iif not, ii am goiing to gather all the blame iin my riight fiist and shove iit so far down your proteiin chute you wiill be 2hiittiing blame for week2.
CTA: …
CTA: la2t chance two iinterject wiith vague reference2 two the future at my expen2e.
CTA: no?
CTA: then ii'm done here.
CTA closed memo.
Sollux leaned away from the lunchtop, rubbing his eyes beneath his bi-colored glasses. He had shut off all the lights in his quarters, and pushed himself into a corner along with a copious amount of gelatinous, half-formed mutant body parts that he had found upon first inspecting his private section of the lab. They did not have any particularly offensive odors and their implacable viscosity reminded him a lot of sopor slime. He had piled them up a while ago, and sat in them now with the hope that their comforting texture would help him relax.
Instead he felt himself assailed by an excruciating migraine, accompanied by the assured return of the voices. Though he needed to be alone now and did indeed enjoy the security that privacy offered, its pursuit was hindered by the screaming at the back of his skull. He took off his glasses for a moment, trying to shove away the pain as he squinted at the lunchtop's holographic monitor.
The system had been easy to set up, once he had thought of it. At first the notion of time travel had been a tricky one. Not having been granted the title of one allocated to the manipulation of time, he had, for the first few seconds at least, assumed that traveling back to an earlier point to confront Eridan was impossible.
Until he remembered that their own Maid of Time was currently a robot.
Until he remembered that her robotic body and all of its powers was hooked directly to a computer that linked her to the lab's main network.
Until he remembered that hacking into networks happened to be one of his specialties.
From there it had almost been too easy. Nothing like the monster of an encryption that still prevented him from contacting his future self. It was a simple matter of bypassing the flimsy barriers Equius had erected in the robot in order to keep the self-consciousness of the soul inhabiting it separate from any other software it chose to interact with.
It only hurt if he thought about it for too long. The fact that he was invading Aradia's mind without her consent, all for the sake of salvaging a relationship that would never hold a candle to that first flicker of flush, was something that was easily ignored if he chose to treat it merely as the series of numbers it was. He watched as they scrolled past the screen, her inner workings laid before him in numerical coding. Her soul put into quantified text. Memories as a series of video feeds and picture files. Favorite smells and tastes filed under different extensions and all tucked away under folders that were incompatible with the overall system.
It was easier for him like this. To see everything broken down and given definite value. Had he been forced to face Aradia in any other context, the guilt would have been too much for him to bear. But this way it was clean. Simple. Professional. Almost as if it were meant to happen. Almost as if it were something he was always intended to do.
He took comfort in that as he located the programs that had been installed in Aradia's mental coding by the game itself. He teased them from her system without much difficulty and copied the program and the extensions necessary to run it to his (well, technically Kanaya's) computer.
It had taken less than a half an hour. In fact, the transformation of his newly procured lunchtop into a device of time travel was so anticlimactic that he used the extra time he was afforded to chew out his future self with all the heavy-handed bravado he could muster. Once that was done and the memo was closed, all that was left for him to do was to return to depths of his migraine and stare once again at the program hovering on his screen, waiting to be initiated.
After a while of that, he decided there was really nothing else for it but to hit enter. He had wasted enough time waiting for someone to interfere.
The program installed rapidly considering the amount of data that had to be translated to his computer. Once in, an extremely rough and minimalistic interface popped up, the kind allocated to serve as a backup in case the intended interface (what in this case he supposed was the user's mind) failed to function properly. Laid out before him was an illustrated timeline not unlike the one employed by Trollian. Each individual in the game was connected to it, and as he ran his mouse over it, a box of text would appear in the upper right hand corner of his monitor. It was obviously not as streamlined of an interface as Trollian's, but he did not have the patience to improve it to show a video feed as he had done for the chat program.
So he made do with the writing as he pushed his mouse over Eridan's timeline. He had looked over the old log he had kept when his future self had first contacted him, so as to make sure he was contacting Eridan at the appropriate time. His future self had said to invite the sea dweller to duel him while they had still been in the Medium on their own worlds. So he pushed the mouse down over Eridan's timeline until the troll's "loc" specification was followed by LOWAA. Not wanting to complicate things too much, Sollux decided he wanted to select a period from his own timeline where he had been absent from his world and off interacting with Feferi somewhere. He was not, after all, in possession of any immediate recollection of having met up with his future self, and was a bit wary of creating any drastic and possibly cataclysmic conflicts in the timeline. So he selected a timeframe just before his "loc" specification changed from LOBAF to LODAG. He figured that way he himself would wind up on his own land just as his past self was going through a gate with Feferi.
Once he found just the right timeframe to avoid any contact with his past self, he double clicked on it and winced, unsure of what to expect.
What he got was an error message.
Technology was a fucking pain in the ass sometimes.
Apparently there was some sort of user discrepancy, as he had not set the computer up to correspond with any timeline in particular and the program required a user association of some sort to ensure travel along only one timeline. Sollux supposed that any crossing over of timelines would breech some sort of contingency of space that the program was not built to deal with.
Jargon aside, it was a huge pain and just served to piss him off further right when he had finally mustered the nerve to go through with all of this time fuckery.
He pulled the information from his own timeline and pasted it into the user verification slot in the program, hoping that such a hack job would serve for the time being. He reopened the timelines again, found his spot once more, and, for the second time, held his breath and waited for the fireworks.
It was pretty anticlimactic, as all things had been turning out to be thus far. As easily as switching channels on a television, he found himself clutching the computer in an extremely different location. The shift in his surroundings was so instantaneous as to somehow not even be jarring. His ears were suddenly assaulted by the roar of flames and heat pressed to every inch of his skin as if he had been plunged directly into fresh sopor slime. The dark of his private lab section was replaced with bright red flames and green swatches of sky. Peeking through the clouds of smoke were the speckled pink dots that he knew to be the floating brains of his land's namesake.
He blinked a few times, trying to adjust, once again, to the perpetual singed scent of his world. He set the lunchtop aside to get to his feet for a moment and absorb the situation. He was in an odd sort of location that he only vaguely remembered visiting during his original experience in his world. Looking at it now, he supposed it was because his past self had just passed through a gate without ever getting the chance to really absorb his current surroundings.
Shaking off the conundrums that time travel inevitably brought with it, he tried to focus on something else. The ground. That was a start. He stared at the ridged stone beneath his feet, the undulating patterns mimicking that of cerebral tissue. His lips pulled back over his teeth in a disgusted sneer. He had never been too fond of his world and its floating brains.
As he lifted his eyes, he saw that he was standing roughly at the base of a large pyramid-like temple with a sculpture resembling a cerebrum perched at its peak. A lake of fire surrounded him on all sides, but the circular slab of ridged stone he was standing on was half a mile in diamter at least.
Deciding this was as good a place as any, Sollux sat back down on the ground and pulled the lunchtop back into his lap. When he opened Trollian, he scrolled through the list of handles before he spotted Eridan's garish purple username and, with a heavy sigh at the injustice of it all, double clicked it.
twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling caligulasAquarium [CA]
TA: ii need you two get over here.
CA: sol wwhat the fuck are you doin botherin me right noww
CA: i wwas just tryin to get in contact wwith fef and she said you and her had some business to be takin care of
CA: wwhich i guess wwas all just a front to get rid a me seein as youre here speakin wwith me noww
CA: but dont think i dont see howw it is wwith you twwo
TA: ii'm runniing really 2hort on patiience riight now and ii don't have tiime two deal wiith your 2u2piiciion2 about who'2 2hariing quadrant2 wiith who.
TA: ju2t get your a22 to lobaf 2o we can duel.
CA: wwhat
TA: don't make me repeat my2elf.
TA: ii already have two deal wiith enough of the doubliing motiif wiithout iit.
CA: i guess im just wwonderin wwhat brought this on all of a sudden
CA: ivve been tryin to contact both a you for days and you havvent deigned to answwer me since i guess you wwere so fuckin tied up in your owwn flippin grubcake of an advventure
CA: meanwwhile i havve to deal wwith the hardest land a any a you dirt shovvers all by myself
CA: sorry wwe cant all havve such a great fuckin time of it
TA: all riight ju2t fuckiing 2hut up for a miinute okay?
TA: phy2iically remove your prong2 from the keyboard for two 2econd2, you unforgiivable a22hole, and ju2t read thii2.
TA: ii am a2kiing you
TA: two get off your 2hiitty angel land
TA: and come fiight wiith me.
TA: …
TA: all riight feel free two re2pond now.
CA: seriously sol im getting a little confused as to the purpose a all this
CA: i mean i knoww you told me to shovve a throb stalk in it the other day wwhen i wwas tryin to contact you in the middle a some difficult battle
CA: wwhich just makes me fuckin laugh since until youvve fought one a these angels on my land you dont evven havve the slightest inclination as to the meanin a the wword difficult
CA: but other than that i havvent really done anythin to elicit a challenge a this sevverity
CA: sol are you there
CA: i am needin some explanations here and you are bein nothin but cagey
TA: ju2t come duel me. ii don't have two explaiin my2elf two your 2tupiid a22.
CA: wwait
CA: is this
CA: are you comin on to me sol
CA: sol i see youre still online
CA: you cant just leavve me hangin after a proposition wwith such bellicose undertones
TA: ii won't waiit for you long.
twinArmageddons [TA] ceased trolling caligulasAquarium [CA]
Sollux pulled away from the lunchtop after he had closed out Trollian, his hands shaking. He pulled off his glasses and pressed his palms to his face, breathing slowly out of his mouth.
It was done. He had gone back in time and initiated a caliginous rivalry with Eridan. Now all he had to do was wait. Wait and recover under his mortally wounded pride. Wait and incapacitate the fish prince with a few well placed blasts of psionic energy.
Though it only took a few minutes, it felt as if he spent a lifetime trapped in that waiting.
He heard the sea dweller before he saw him. Even over the roar of the flames surrounding the wide slab of rock, the tappin of shoes against stone invaded his ears, and he heard the now familiar clack of the butt of Eridan's rifle hitting the ground.
"Well, are you goin' to stop bein' so fuckin' enigmatic about this, Sol?" came the sea dweller's voice at last.
It was at this point that Sollux had no choice but to lift his head from his hands. His glasses dangled from the crook of his forefinger as he slowly stood, his mismatched eyes unnaturally dry. He surveyed Eridan without the normal bi-colored tints, taking in the orange light of the flames and how it highlighted the sharp edges of Eridan's lean figure. He took in the deepness of the purple as the sea dweller's cape snapped about his calves in a gust of wind.
"I have to fuckin' wonder what's wrong with you," Eridan snapped, and Sollux noticed the way his black lips curled back over his teeth, like they usually did when he got angry. He noticed it with the grim realization that he had noticed it before, and that it had made enough of an impression for him to notice it again.
It made his chest tight. It made the breath catch in his throat. It made the next words come hard.
"If you've figured thith out then I have nothing to thay to you."
Eridan fell silent, and he regarded Sollux with narrowed eyes from behind his thick-framed glasses. After a bit, his expression crumbled into a distant sort of shock.
"Oh my god, you really are waxin' black for me aren't you?"
Sollux hated how hopeful his voice sounded. As if Sollux had just offered him a hand in the midst of a stormy sea. He hated how much this mattered to Eridan.
How much it mattered to him.
Because he could not say it. Even though he had done so much to correct this. Betrayed Aradia's trust. Gone back in time with no inherent knowledge of how to do so. Dragged Eridan all the way to his land back in the Medium. Even after all of it, he could not say it. Even though he was staring at the sea dweller's haughty figure and feeling the old vexation begin to boil in his gut. He could not do it. He could not lie.
Light snapped around his eyes as he drew back a few steps, one arm raised. He bared his teeth, trying to force that burning sensation in his stomach to become more painful. To flare and chew at him and build the rage he needed to power his psionics.
Eridan's lips curled further in a sneer. "So is that how it is?" he asked, his voice cutting through the hum of energy and the roar of the flames. "You can't be fuckin' satisfied with what you have. You want the whole package. Royalty stuffin' all you quadrants, is that it?"
He said nothing. He tried to let the words sink in. He tried to let them bury in his flesh and fester and hurt. He bared his teeth, the light snapping in front of his eyes growing brighter. Hotter.
"I should have fuckin' known that land dwellin' trash like you would be sucked in by the first taste a high class fare. You are a transparent sack a barnacle-crusted shit, Sol, and don't think I don't see what you're doin'." He picked up his rifle and cocked it, his eyes obscured by the orange glare against his glasses.
"I knew you'd eventually want me," Eridan continued, his voice rising in pitch and volume. "It's only natural in pus blooded scum like you to want what you were never fuckin' meant to have. Well I'll let you have me, Sol, if you can put up a decent sort a fight. I'll let you have me but you can't have us fuckin' both. I will find a way to pull her out a your disgustin' red quadrant if it's the last thing I fuckin' do and you can consider that a promise."
He took it in. He practically inhaled it. Feeding off of the rage, he tried to build a hatred of his own. He tried to convince himself that it was real. That it would work. That this was what he wanted. That this was the reason he had done all he had done.
Eridan leveled his shimmering blue weapon at Sollux, orange and red light dancing off its edges. He pulled back his lips in a grimace as he gripped the trigger, white light blasting forth from the muzzle.
Sollux wrenched his hands apart, red and blue light snapping from his palms as he threw his head back and screamed. Green lightning forked across the soot-darkened sky as he lowered his gaze and let the energy explode from his eyes as if his head was being cracked in two. He screamed and screamed and never stopped screaming as his skull burned from the inside out, his eyes like two molten pits in his head.
Ahab's Crosshairs spun in the air, its muzzle darkened and spitting smoke and sparks. Eridan fell backwards onto the stone, convulsing with the remnants of the blast, nearly sobbing as red and blue sparks continued to snap over his flesh. He made a valiant effort to reach for his gun with a trembling hand as Sollux approached, but the troll simply kicked it away with the toe of his white shoe.
"D-don't thin-nk you'v-ve w-won, Sol," Eridan tried to push out, his throat obviously still wracked with convulsions from the assault. He put a hand to his neck, trying to breathe, purple tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. "F-fuck I-I… Fuck I thi-ink I'm dyi-in' here."
Sollux said nothing as he replaced his bi-colored glasses. He simply turned away from the troll and strode across the ridged stone, stooping to gather up the lunchtop.
"Agh… Fuck…" Eridan coughed, pushing himself to his knees. "You can't f-fuckin' leav-ve me like this Sol, I know-w how-w much you hate me. Your fuckin' secret is o-out. Y-you can't hide all your black feelin's from me anym-more."
Sollux straightened, lunchtop in hand, and began to walk across the slab of stone, past Eridan, and down a narrow path cut through the flames.
"Sol! Don't you fuckin' walk away from me, this isn't over!" Eridan screamed, trying to get to his feet and stumbling back to the ground. "I know how you feel, you can't pretend like it never happened! Sol! SOL!"
In the end he couldn't say it.
Because in the end he didn't hate Eridan Ampora.
Not like that.
Not completely.
And he didn't want to.