Rose did not like it underground. The Under-Laboratory specifically had every trapping of danger one could imagine in an old factory setting, and a full orchestra of gloomy ambience set to drip, clang or rattle almost exactly when you wanted it to least. She had no idea where the light was coming from, seeing as how it made no sense. There were no bulbs in the underlab.
But there were plenty of vantage points. Rose really had no idea what these halls had been used for, if not pure maintenance. There were scummy old vats, lined with rust and acid-splashed steel. There were whole tubs, like chemical pools in two rows of three, which she found time and time again, each with different stains. Old observation chambers overhung the rooms, their forward-slanting window panes having largely since collapsed or been smashed by imps, leaving a border of broken glass on the edges of nearly ever room. Last of all, Rose kept hearing noses of a less ambient sort. The small Alternian creatures that had been smuggled into the lab by certain Trolls moved through the walls like a Delaporean wave, while she had at least once heard a door she had definitely closed snap shut a minute later.
Rose pressed on, but did not like where her search was leading her with every step. She was growing closer and closer to the vault where they had found the imps. Sollux had explained to her at the time that since the lab was a mandatory part of the game, the echeladder level of any Underlings there was dynamically scaled beyond a high minimum: scaled, that was, to the Trolls. To a point they were at least still Imps, but Rose had not been so embarrassed in the course of the entire game, and Jade - Jade! - has sworn like a pirate when an imp took a round through the temple and simply turned towards and jumped her.
As Rose passed into a room filled with large silos of some sort, then the voice started. Muffled, barely reaching her for thanks of the acoustic nightmare of the echoing pipes, Rose had no idea where it could be coming from, and no idea what was being said. She proceeded deeper into the underlab, a ghost on her shoulder pleading incoherencies.
After a time, she found her footsteps changed beneath her as she stepped onto a plastic mesh designed to let liquid flow into troughs on either side of the hallway: a chemical shower. She approached the next door warily but, seeing by the pile of rust flakes that the door had recently been opened, did the same with gloved hands once pink, now stained brown from this simple expedition's wear. She pulled open the huge door and stepped into a clone lab, long buried under newer development. A proto body still floated in an old tube, obscured by a cloud of smoky, dark yellow water mixed with visible debris.
"...completely unawares..."
Rose froze, and listened carefully, scanning the room from top to bottom. There were dead computers, data banks and tubes everywhere: more than enough places to hide. The Quills of Echidna came out as she walked slowly atop a trough, casting a wary eye towards the observatory lounge as she approached the full vat, her back carefully to the wall, as close as she dared to mind the shattered glass. She cast the occasional gaze behind her. No Imp was going to be able to come from that angle, but a determined Basilisk... And who in Sburb was speaking?
"...no idea... dealing with. She will never know w..."
The speaker had picked up at the end, and certain of the direction, Rose wheeled to her right, quills high at the ready.
"...looks in the opposite direction, and the mighty huntress makes a deadly pounce!"
Rose hit the ground just as she had started her about-face. A weight pinned her face down inches from a pool of brackish chemical bath glittering like it covered a pile of bladed glass jewels. A rain of slaps from an overlarge overcoat lashed across her back before the weight shifted and her captor began to gnaw on her shoulder, teeth sheathed behind her lips.
"N-" Rose swatted at her. "Nepeta!"
"But her prey has survived the initial impact and is fighting back!" Nepeta decided this warranted another jacket flogging.
"Argh!" Rose had no choice but to raise her hand to defend herself when all at once Nepeta stopped and scuttled off across the floor towards the centre of the room on all fours. Rose rolled slightly to have a better look at her, and saw her squatting on tiptoes, one hand down for balance alongside the tip of her tail and the other held in the air as she looked about the room. When she looked back in Rose's direction, her eyes slid slowly from the left toward the right, and then back, even slower, again. At last, she perked up slightly and, after a pause, shook her arms a number of times to get her sleeves aside and extended her weapon-claws and then bolted away. Her paws hit the ground in total silence while she shouted:
"the graceful beast races off in search of easier purrey!"
Rose, more than a little dumbfounded, pushed up with her right hand in hopes of righting herself but feel back to the ground with a wince as a shot of pain rain down the arm. Checking her shoulder, she found that a shard of dirty glass had embedded itself in her upper arm. Gritting her teeth, she pulled out the shard and rolled away to drier ground, where she fumbled through her sylladex to find the branch that held her stash of weaker healing candy. She popped one and felt the wound close on her shoulder, but jumped again when a rattling sound started from just to her side. She looked down and saw a lumpy Alternian hard candy lying not far from her.
"You should take an antidote just in case," echoed a voice from above. She looked up to the observation windows. "There's no sense in getting infected."
"Not really sanitary on the ground like that," she noted.
"Not really. It may be covered in any number of dangerous germs but it will also kill them in your bloodstream."
Well, thought Rose, if that isn't a mash of Wonderland nonsense. All the same, she picked up the gnarly lozenge and wiped it on a clean patch of sleeve before sticking it reluctantly in her mouth and looking up at the glinting broken shades that were all she could see of her Cheshire cat.
It took her a while to make her way to Equius, seeing as how he had moved on to continue his close watch on Nepeta. She found him hunched over a window smashed by the imps that had once lived there, looking down over a room filled with steam boilers that clicked loudly every twelve seconds, but seemed otherwise completely empty.
"I've been looking for you," Rose said by way of greeting.
"Does this have something to do with my lowblood leader requesting another set of silly vanity repairs or have Nitram's legs failed again? Either way, he should feel ashamed for sending someone of our calibre down to play messenger."
Rose was never really sure how to respond to Equius once they had first met in person and always phrased her words very carefully. She was well aware how his determination to compare the four humans had landed her via her mother's income as the rough equivalent to "Blue bloods." Similarly, he had decided Dave was an Orange or Yellow, far below his contempt, and John a Yellow or Green (the system seemed to lack a certain precision). But that was just a taste: Terezi had whispered a few weeks regarding the final stages of his research. Apparently, once he had computed just how much it would take for one to buy their own private island and ship research components, heavy firearms and radioactive food processing units to it, he had immediately left the room to take a cold shower.
"...Yeah, Tavros," she said after weighing her options. "And Eridan may have broken my door."
"Yes, w-well," he said, looking up briefly and returning with a stammer to his vantage, "I'm sure Lord Ampora had his reasons."
"...You could... you could say that."
She joined him at the adjoining window, which had fallen out entirely, and looked about in hopes of finding Nepeta. "What's she hunting?"
"Ratlings," he replied. Rose nodded, having seen them before: a sort of white-furred rat with a tail covered in microscopic blades that snuck into the lab to steal food every few days or so. As she understood it, they had been teleported in with the surrounds of several of the Troll's hives, along with an assortment of other creatures that had palled along, largely in what had been called "Feferi's zoo," before being set loose, bred to twice their original number, in the labs.
"Where-"
Equius pointed, and following his finger, she saw a ratling trying to sneak around one of the steam boilers. It ran along the multi-branched causeway that made up the apparent "floor" of a room that probably truly ended storeys deep into the underground, and stopped near a cloud of leaking steam from one of the boilers. The boiler squealed and hissed before cutting off at once in its cycle, and as the steam began to clear, Rose caught a glint of steal break through its haze.
"...lowered close to the ground, knowing its prey couldn't see or smell her..."
Nepeta barrelled forward, the hanging metal of the causeway swaying this way and that with an awful din as she banged into support beams. The ratling raced likewise for cover, and the whole room below echoed in a chaotic scramble of claws on metal. They went this way, then another, the rat clearly lost on the causeway. Rose lost them too in the obscuring cover of the boilers and steam, but in a moment they rounded about the side and ran straight by her view. The ratling froze as it reached the end, having unwittingly been chased into a dead end, and could only turn back and stare in horror as death closed in on it, gleefully narrating: "and then with a final strike the huntress closes in!" Nepeta struck the ratling, snapping it into her paws, and momentum carried her smack into the wall with her shoulder, sending a gong ring about the room as the causeway rattled and shook.
Rose look up and saw that Equius had already started his descent down to meet her, and picked up the pace to join him. They met again in the hallway, as Nepeta sauntered out of the causeway on her knuckles, her victim clutched neatly in her teeth, its blood-stained coat still dripping out over her lower lip and onto the ground. Proud and graceful, Nepeta deposited the ratling at Equius' feet.
"Nepeta," he said, "cease this 100dicrus gift-giving e%ercise at once."
Nepeta turned her nose up at him, retrieved the ratling and deposited it at Rose's feet instead. She could not help but look down at it. Its hind legs had been broken in the impact of the chase and a muddied yellow tear running from its neck to its belly, its left foreleg hanging loose with nothing left to hold it fast but the skin. She had seen worse, done worse to the underlings of the game, but that did not make her want to stare. Nepeta beamed up at her with a lemon-smeared smile and giant eyes.
"You know perfectly well that no one here is interested in dead animals but you."
"Hmph," Nepeta puffed, and picked up the ratling with both hands and started off down the hall on her feet. Equius followed and Rose pressed up close beside, trying to keep her eyes off of Nepeta.
"You knoooooow..." Nepeta said after a few steps, leaning into Equius until he was practically carrying her weight. "These hunts would be way more fun if a certain someone would come with me."
"Out of the question," he replied at once. "The under-laboratory is a deathtrap. It's pathetic enough that I let you run about down here."
Nepeta, taking to her feet proper, replied gracefully by sticking out her tongue at him. Rose shook her head and kept walking. There was a long way left to go to get out of the underlab, and she was not about to provoke their debate just to liven it up. At least, not if she could help it.
TT: The question I wanted to ask concerns the conciliatory relationships.
GA: Fair Enough.
TT: Since the beginning of your contact with our team during the game, I have been in intermittent contact with arsenicCatnip.
GA: Nepeta
TT: Thank you.
TT: In one of our few conversations actually directed at me, I learned a good deal about her moirail, Equius.
GA: She Was Willing To Use His Name But Not Her Own
TT: She insisted to me that she was a cougar.
TT: Cougars don't have names on earth, you see.
GA: Of Course How Silly Of Me
TT: My curiosity stems from the apparent nature of their relationship.
TT: Prior to our most immediate discussion, I would have called the relationship one of "best friends."
TT: But obviously my terminology has gone foul.
GA: Well Not Entirely Foul
GA: The Grey Quadrant Is Often The Home Of The Closest Relationships
GA: While Trolls Have A Fixation On Our Rage There Is Still Something To Be Said For Maintaining One's Self-Control
GA: And That Is After All The Duty Of The Moirail
GA: But Such Entries Are Unusual At A Young Age
TT: If I am keeping proper track, your group had three at the start of this game.
GA: The Princess Attracts Unusual Allies
GA: And Of Course Qualifies Herself
TT: You're hinting again at the Insurrection you mentioned earlier.
GA: Indeed
GA: While We Encompassed A Number Of Related Circles In Our Extreme Youth
GA: We Came Together At First Temporarily Allied Under Cuttlefishculler
GA: In Preparation For Her Insurrection Against Her Imperial Majesty Of The Eternal Thunder
TT: Until you were interrupted by foreknowledge of this Sgrubian burp in your plans?
GA: Yes And The Empress With A More Literal Burp
GA: The Irony Was To A Certain Extent Palpable
GA: That Is
GA: In The Form Of Our Black King
TT: Unfortunate.
GA: Yes
GA: But Forming A Group Of Dangerous And Gifted Persons Tends To Result In Moirails
GA: And Explosions
GA: With Cuttlefishculler And Caligulasaqarium As Our Nucleus We Were A Touch More Hostile Than The Average
GA: Though Equally Bound To Hold Together In Times Of Internal Crisis
TT: arachnidsGrip.
GA: Precisely
TT: So Equius and Nepeta also fall along this array of unusual circumstances?
GA: No
GA: They Are If Anything The Most Normal Pale Relationship In Our Lives
TT: Nepeta repeatedly referred to her moirail as "strong."
TT: Should I thus assume that he is "strong" enough to be dangerous, and thus necessitate a moirail?
GA: Yes But In Practice The Distinction Goes Largely In The Reverse
GA: Equius Is Placated By His Own Recreation And Choice Of Semi-Invulnerable Kismesis
TT: So Nepeta is more dangerous than Equius?
GA: Not With A Fist
GA: But Imagine If You Will That A New Sgrub Players Initial Status
GA: Level 1
GA: Is Based On Previous Combat Training And Abilities
TT: I can picture Strider easily enough for that.
GA: Good
GA: In This Regard Nepeta's Real-World Combat Training Far Outstrips Our Own
GA: Those That Even Approach Her Gained That Previous Experience In Artificial Combat
GA: Or With Powerful Weaponry Where Nepeta Used Only Claws To Tear Down Equal Opponents
TT: Remarkable. I had not struck her as any notable threat whatsoever in our conversations.
GA: I Also Suspect She May Have Trouble Controlling Her Anger
GA: Equius Had Often Counselled Against Her Participating In These Same Artificial Combats
GA: With Some Enthusiasm
TT: Even for him?
GA: You Have Spoken With Him?
TT: Once.
TT: He demanded to know my mother's annual income.
TT: Then said something about exchange rates and disappeared.
GA: Curious
TT: So you suspect he is containing a particularly aggressive personality in Nepeta?
TT: I find this hard to believe.
TT: She's such a doll.
GA: I Do Not Mean To Mar Your Impression Of Her
GA: The Nepeta You Have Known Has Been Strengthened By Her Relationships As Much As You Have Been By Yours
GA: And While It Would Behoove Him To Learn Some Manners In How He Handles These Affairs
GA: I Think The Love Of Her Moirail Makes Her Stronger Still
TT: Which brings me back to where I began.
TT: Is this kind of close, amicable moirallegiance a common one?
GA: Not Uncommon
GA: Though Such A Relationship Has A Good Deal Of Pros And Cons
TT: Such as?
GA: Well What Would You Say Is The Primary Duty Of A Moirail
TT: I'm not sure I'm qualified to make that kind of distinction.
GA: Keep In Mind
GA: That In Trying To Keep A Fellow Troll From Performing Dangerous Acts
GA: Moiraility Remains A Romantic Relationship
TT: Perhaps something to do, then, with kismesissitude?
GA: Exactly
TT: To prevent ones moirail from killing their kismesis?
GA: And Being Killed In Turn
GA: Kismesissitudes Have To Be Kept In Check To Keep Them From Going Over Board At Their Peaks
GA: The Auspisice Keeps The Flame From Lighting In Other Pairings Or Into Flushed Pairings
GA: And The Moirail Prevents Any Major Damage In The Caliginous
GA: In Theory
TT: I can see the pro, then.
TT: Who better to talk you down than someone you're close with?
GA: Though I Believe In This Regard Nepeta Has Her Greatest Failing As A Moirail
GA: As I Cannot Imagine Her Being Willing To Directly Interfere With Equius And His Kismesis
GA: Given Her Personal Distaste For Blackrom
GA: Can You Likewise See The Con
TT: No. Enlighten me?
GA: Remember That Kismesis Is A Sexual Relationship
TT: Ah. Resentment.
TT: It would be a shame to ruin a strong relationship with your moirail when they are simply doing their duty
TT: Even if that duty is to keep you from getting off on a spaded murder
GA: Excellent But Only Half Of The Picture
TT: I'm afraid I'm having trouble coming up with a second situation.
GA: I Would Hate To Interrupt You Now
GA: You Are Proving Conciliatorily Apt
TT: Another hint?
GA: Imagine Yourself As A Moirail Trying To Prevent Your Partner From Commiting A As You Said Spaded Murder
GA: How Would You Go About It
TT: I suppose I would attempt to talk him or her down
GA: Which Effectively Avoids The Pitfall You Are Searching For
GA: But As Certain Moirails Have Found In The Past This Technique Runs A Certain Risk Of Failure
GA: And I Fear Your Moirail's Kismesis Has Just Lost Permanent Use Of His Legs
TT: Vivid!
GA: And Now Your Moirail Is Out Of Your Control
GA: And Will Fall Into A New Misguided Moirallegience With Some Other Troll
GA: That Perhaps Harboured Some Other Kind Of Feeling Towards Her At The Time
GA: Dont You See What Youve Done Rose
TT: And now suddenly out of hand.
GA: Sorry
TT: Back on topic.
TT: I suppose the next technique is direct intervention.
TT: To get in and fight them away from their kismesis, physically or psychically.
GA: Indeed
TT: ...
TT: Oh my.
GA: I See You Have Grasped It
TT: Yes, certainly.
TT: It would seem that such a prominent threat would necessitate the need for Pale Auspitices.
GA: Rose Dont Be Silly
TT: I can see how jumping from sexual relationship (Kismesissitude) to sexual (Matespritship) would be more common.
TT: But to jump, in a single bound, from platonic to sexual seems far more...
TT: Unstable.
GA: I Suppose We Are All More Afraid Of The Drones Than We Are Of Discovering Negative Feelings For Our Moirails
TT: Certainly not all negative, if you were attracted to them.
GA: Ah Yes
GA: A Personal Bias In That I Would Not Personally Want To Discover Positive Sexual Feelings For My Moirail
GA: In The Midst Of An Attempt To Gut Them For Getting In My Way
TT: Have I mentioned,
TT: In the name of continued cultural understanding
TT: that I find your kismesissitude utterly terrifying?
GA: You Have Implied Along That Route
TT: Have you ever felt Calignous feelings for another Troll, if I can ask?
GA: Not Yet
GA: Jade Green Blood Does Not Spill Lightly
GA: But I Will Find Someone Worthy Of That Beautiful Excess In Time
TT: Inspiring
GA: There Is No Need For Sarcasm
TT: Do you see this?
TT: This is me sticking my tongue out at you.
TT: It is a human gesture of respect and not at a juvenile response to being caught in the act.
GA: Heh
TT: No offence, but I don't imagine that once I've found my spot in your life that I
TT: ...urm.
TT: will be the one making a beautiful mess of your blood.
GA: Disappointing
TT: Oh dear.
GA: Heh Heh
TT: A joke?
TT: From you?
GA: I Can Make Jokes
TT: I'm afraid if you were trying to coerce me to spades that I find this new sense of humour more endearing than hated.
GA: A Shame
TT: ...moving on...
TT: Your turn.
GA: Thank You
"I insist you prepare that thing properly before consuming it."
Nepeta, her mouth full, only managed to reply "Ah'll cook id lader!" before something occurred to her and, with an energetic jolt she jumped immediately in front of Rose. "Rode!" she shouted, as though only then realizing who else was there with her and her moirail. Stopping, she held up a finger for pause as she walked backwards, and swallowed before repeating, pleading eyes looking up almost a full head's height up at her human friend: "Rose! Please tell me you aren't auspisticing for Eridan and Vriska."
"Nepeta!" Equius said, shocked. "Don't talk like that! Rose should feel... erm..."
He pointed at the ratling in Nepeta's hands, and she looked at it cockeyed, cupped up in such a way that Rose could not see quite what was going on. Lowering her eyes, she grasped the ratling, gloved, by its bladed tail and indignantly smacked it up against the steel wall, which rang like a toneless steel drum hit by a broken stick. Rose cut short a gasp with her hand and checked with Equius, who made no obvious reaction one way or another, before allowing herself to fall a half step behind Nepeta. Satisfied, Nepeta smiled up at them both, plump baby-faced dimples and wide eyes, as her moirail picked up where he had left off as though nothing had happened. Nepeta broke her polite silence only to begin picking things out of her teeth with her tongue.
"As I was saying, Rose should be leaping at the chance to be of such an intimate service to the higher classes. To volunteer would be a service to the community and the dwindling nobility."
"I'm not worried about him," Nepeta said with a roll of her eyes. "I just want him to stay with Tavros!"
Rose could not help but notice how Equius' mouth seemed to hang open even wider as he began to fully absorb what had been thrown in front of him. A trickle of sweat beaded up by his "...What did you say?"
"Yeah, yeah, scandal of the century, we know, Equius!" Nepeta wagged her rat at him. "But Rose, you have to! Kanaya won't. I already told her to, but she wouldn't listen when I tried to tell her how cute they are! Rose, they're so kyoooooooooot!. 'tavv did i evver tell you that i'm havving such a great time wwith you' 'wELL, uH, dID I EVER TELL YOU THAT YOU'RE SO HANDSOME, eRIDAN,'"
Nepeta gestured with her fists as though equipped with puppets. Tavros was the one with the rat hanging out from under him. "'come here my handsome muscletroll' 'bUT WHAT ABOUT FEFERI,' 'forget about her my lovve is noww only for you my orange-blooded stallion!'" And she began to mash her fists together, making kissing noises.
Equius wiped away sweat from his face and raised a hand to object, but it was clear from his voice he was not entirely sure whether he actually believed what he was objecting to: "Nepeta, have you... been spying on Lord Ampora's private affairs?"
"No!" Nepeta said, and hid her fists away from him, rat and all. Looking up at Rose, she blushed, and smiled shyly. She mouthed, "They're in my head," to provide a clearly-needed bit of clarification.
"Uh..." Rose was starting to wonder if she was really a part of this conversation. "Nepeta, I'm really not-"
"Rose, please? Please? -" Nepeta managed to endear herself to Rose just a little by managing to walk a perfectly straight backwards line as she continued to squeal. "--" Indeed, she probably would have kept endearing herself if she had not walked straight into the wall when they reached a junction. Jumping with a squeak, Nepeta rounded on the wall as though confused as to where it had come from.
"Nepeta," Rose tried again. "I told Tavros just this morning that I'll give it some thought."
Nepeta held up her hands in surrender. "That's good enough for me!" she said. A moment later, she realized that despite holding up both hands straight and flat, the rat still dangled from one, snagged by its microscopic blades in the fabric of her glove. She glared at it and gave it a shake, but when it did not detach she clenched her fist and forced it down into her sylladex and then ran off down the hall.
"Oh..." Rose said, "I hope her inventory isn't full of those things."
"Agreed," Equius said. He was towelling himself off, and that was a visual Rose kept with her as she and he reached the transportalizer and she was forced once again to confront the demons of the rift. Sure enough, she was able to laugh them off in the second of transit, except the one, frantic and raving, that spat the same elder word at her over and over. "An inch, an inch!" He sounded just a little like she had imagined Jade's grandfather sounded like, but mad. She ignored him and pressed on from the Leo gate to the central, where she entered the void again and he through himself at her, shaking her by the shoulders in a metaphysical grapple.
"Reach an inch and take your wand, you fool girl!" he shouted, to her surprise, in English. "Pick up your wand and live!"
She reappeared in the central lab shaken and nauseous. The Trolls around her did not notice her arrival. They were spread out as it needed, most of them still at their film, including Nepeta who perched her front arms on the back of the couch, but Tavros and Eridan and to Rose's additional dismay, Vriska were hunched intensely over their monitors. Aradia worked silently in her own corner of the room, and there was no sign of Dave and Terezi. Equius stepped through the transportalizer just behind Rose.
And all at once the lab shook with a violent tremor that rocked it from roof to root.
"Delaporean wave", a reference to the Delapores in Lovecraft's The Rats in the Walls was a bit of a descriptive stretch but I feel obliged to shout out direct influences. Rose lives in a Lovecraftian cage on both the physical and spiritual level but while the latter is of her own making, oddly enough between Aradia and Nepeta the physical exists only at the convenience of her monstrous housemates. The idea of Equius grading the kids based on their income, and Rose being considered relatively rich, was not originally mine, but I dont recall anyone making the same conclusion about Jade.