"With me!"

The future Dave and Aradia caught the demon from the left and right, and it blocked once, twice before the current Dave and Aradia struck at his back. Their coordination was beautiful. The demon had to timeslip: an obnoxious trick he was using to guarantee he would outpace Dave and Aradia's flash stepping. A brief green flash and he would vanish to some safe place in the universe, then back in an instant in a new position with sword turned to face the attacker. Dave felt his own blade slide against his opponent's for a moment before Aradia grabbed Jack's closer to the pommel and threw its course. Dave's blade hit in Jack's back thigh and he transformed, bolting away in the form of green lightning, to safety. The safety eroded almost instantly as Jack was forced to raise his blade again to engage with the Dave and Aradia from just a few minutes past.

The current Dave (as far as his stream of consciousness was concerned, or "Day 23 Hour 3-b" to all the other Daves and Aradias) tried to keep his memories of the fight straight in his head. He knew the ones from the future, Day Twenty-Five Something-Something, would cut off to help his and Aradia's earlier selves in a moment. He knew because it had already happened, before they had jumped back to reinforce themselves, a few minutes from now. Just another day at the office.

"we have ab0ut forty seconds" said current incarnation of Aradia, hovering to his left. "just after y0u take the hit 0n your br0w and future y0u clips n0ir's arm"

Dave remembered and nodded confirmation even though neither of them were going to break eye contact off the fight. Of course he remembered. After all, he had the rapidly scar to remind him. He watched the fight between Jack and their alternates, waiting for the opening. There was really no room for more than four of them at close range, not without frequently breaking off, and Dave found that kind of coordination with his future selves more complicated than was really necessary.

It was easier to watch Jack. Right parry, left-to-back, shove, parry right again, timeslip to reverse. "Be honest," he said, count at twenty, nineteen, eighteen... "Fighting an evil demon with our future selves. Best first date, or worst?"

"On my 'first date' with Equius I tore out my own heart and smashed it to a pulp on a rock."

Right, the kismesis. "'Kay. I asked for that. You're going to have to tell me that one." Spin, blow caught by future Aradia, timeslip out of grasp, stab left, cut right, stubbed elbow to the face. Five, four, three, two...

"n0w"

The demon cut high-right, and they were half way there. Dave's past self pulled back to dodge but the blade went straight through his shades, slicing through his eyebrow and the bone of the socket. His future self, no doubt waiting for the opening he already knew would come, brought his sword down on the shoulder of Noir's severed arm and the green light radiating from the demon danced the way it did when he was truly hurt. Their past selves broke away, past Aradia providing cover long enough for Dave replace his shades with a fresh copy and to choke down one of Egbert's disgusting raspberry gummy potions. In the meantime, the current Dave and Aradia took their places.

Blades clashed, Jack's sword striking against Dave's or against heavily armoured robot hands with every stroke, and they left him no room or time to use any more complex powers than basic survival would allow. The constant fencing could not last forever, and perhaps the fact that the Daves and Aradias knew exactly when it was going to fail paved the way for their own mistake. After Jack's fifth attack in his direction, current Dave's sword bounced aside just enough to free both of Jack's arms simultaneously.

"Away!" Future Dave ordered and, fully aware of what was about to happen they all split away at once. Current Dave caught his minutes-younger self on the shoulder as he instinctively approached to take the opening. He pointed to Jack as explanation, whose hand and stump had begun to glow with white-hot power. Jack barked at them, enraged at their prescience.

"We'll take it from here," current Dave told himself, and past Dave returned Jack's call with a smirk before vanishing into the time stream with his partner. The remaining four kept a lock on Jack.

"Big money, big money, no whammies," Dave muttered, 80's game shows serving passably for his ironic purposes though he would have preferred a call-back to The Newlywed Game. They watched Jack work, sending out his feelers. They knew better than to approach, as lines of light spread out from the demon in a latticework through space and time. The first time they had tried to attack him when the lattice was up and searching, Aradia had been seized and had been forced to abandon her body as he took control. They had only been rescued by their deep future selves, from somewhere even further ahead than Dave stood now, and he had no mind to force them back again. They could handle themselves.

The lattice changed colour, twisting and warping as it slipped into the past, and finally grasped something substantial. The demon braced its stumped arm to seal the catch and Dave tried to get a look across the thread in time to see just what he had found. A tall monster with heavy claws for hands greeted his probing powers at the other end. The beast was hunting and otherwise unaware of the temporal hook in its side; all the same, some fragment of its personality fought against the fisherman and the line shook and pulled as though trying to wrench free of its own accord.

"Karkat's lusus," Aradia muttered, though Dave, with his mind half in the past, was not sure whether she was the one from his present or future.

The next line, from the same hand, hooked around a smaller beast: feline with two mouths, also hunting. A tiny, infant figure, impossible for Dave to make out as it was not the subject of the hook, thrashed about in the bush beside it without any of the cat's practiced stealth. The cat monster was also unaware of the hook, this time in its eye, but the line shook just as violently. Dave thought he heard the lusus' soul growling and hissing with ever lash of the thread. Last of all, Jack's right hand hooked a final beast, but Dave did not have time to take it in before the demon snapped the loose, still-probing lines and charged straight into him. The three temporal connects, resembling hovering balls of colour, floated above Jack like balloons tethered by lines of time and light, and the first line pulsed with an active power.

Dave raised his blade to parry, but Jack reached out with his severed arm and somehow grabbed the blade with an unshakable grip. The future Aradia went for his head before Noir could bring the blade fully to bear, buying Dave enough time to pull aside. Jack turned his attention to her for a moment, just as current Aradia and Dave's future self joined in and forced him to timeslip. Dave's sword was freed from the inexplicable grasp, and he was able to get a look at the trouble for the first time. Through the power of the temporal connection to Karkat's lusus, Jack had sprouted a spectral arm out of First Guardian power, scratching clear and unclear back and forth from the shape of a giant crab claw.

"God dammit, I hate when he does this." Dave pushed back to the fight, just as the demon slammed the open claw across and into current Aradia's left arm, ripping open a section. Dave sent his blade up, harmlessly through the semi-tangible arm and into Jack's chin. The light of Jack's power swarmed in pain and he reverted to his dog mentality in a spat of senseless, if hideous, barking. Future Aradia seized the initiative. One hand on a music box, she synched her timeline with that of the line hooked to the crustacean lusus, and took ahold. She pulled it hard, yanking it out of Jack's wrist and control, and then let it drop, where it snapped back to its victim. The line disappeared like mist into time, and Jack's spectral hand vanished.

Both Daves covered her as she fell back to a safer position. The future Dave left off with a quip: "It's not nice to steal, Jack." Jack returned the quip with another bark, and an honest attempt to bite one of them. Failing that, he tugged with his stump on the second temporal line.

A shimmering of green light appeared near the demon's muzzle as the second lusus' powers flowed into Jack. Dave only had a split second to make out the cat mouths forming over Jack's mouth before claws cut past his face lightning-fast, then his chest, then his leg. The lusus he had linked to was fast, too fast, and the four warriors of time split off into pairs.

"Nepeta would be proud," the current Aradia said, cradling her split left arm. Dave could see exposed wires in the wound, along with the claw scratches and even true cuts on her breastplate and face. He wished she could have had enough time to duct tape the arm gash, as was her usual course of first aid, but Bec Noir would only wait so long.

"How do you wanna do this?" he asked her. His eyes shifted towards their future selves, who were watching him in turn and waiting for action. Okay then, it's on us.

Aradia nodded. "...Cover me."

She jetting off to one side, and engaged Jack again, her damaged arm loose and exposed. Dave followed, and waited. Was that the whole plan? "Cover me"? Before that day he might have paused, shouted questions or at least quipped in response to Aradia's orders, but something was different. He was not ready to admit it to himself, and certainly not to her, but he was finding it easier to trust Aradia implicitly. Talking to her earlier that night, to admit about Terezi and be open, had started a change. It was like the way he had learned to trust Jade, John and Rose, when he had finally admitted that he sort of liked drawing his terrible comics, and they had... eh... mostly understood. So if she said "Cover me," well, he didn't understand, but maybe he'd put himself out there and give it a shot. What's the worst that could happen?

Aradia and Jack clashed once, fist locking with spectral paw and a headbutt caught with feline reflexes, and she broke away. They clashed again: she took a hit to her leg, and broke away. They clashed a third time: a punch got through to Jack's chest, another caught by the wrist, and then-

Dave's caught Jack's sword in mid-air just as the demon emerged from timeslip. Aradia broke away as Jack pressed the offensive, pushing Dave's blade away with all his absurd strength. His spectral claws on feet and hand cut light, irritating gashes across Dave's body, tearing the skin in a dozen places, but the sword would be the real killing blow and so Dave knew he had to focus. Jack's eyes met Dave's across their swords and his muzzles, spectral and otherwise, curved up in a disturbing, out of sync smile.

"MoRNINg strIder," Jack said. The very sound of his voice scratched in Dave's ear - static, flux and green - and lingered there. Another of Jack's intentional irritations. True, Dave knew he was bleeding, badly. True, he could not focus. But the sword was death. He could focus on that, or break away. He held.

Aradia seized Jack's third temporal line, unseen by both, and Jack and Dave disengaged simultaneously. The third soul, or at least the connection to it that floated just above Jack and Aradia's head, thrashed left and right violently at the hope of freedom. Jack attacked her, in his fury, but Dave did not even have to glance at Aradia to follow her plan. His one hand already on his timetables, Dave severed the second line and Jack's feline powers dissipated at once. As Aradia flew past Jack's blade, the final line still in hand, Jack drew his power through time from the final soul, perhaps not even yet aware that he had lost the second.

As the third and final form scratched into existence about the demon, Jack took on a look of unrealistic juxtaposition. Something about his new shimmering form, and Jack's trying to compress the creature at the other end of the line to a humanoid size, made him look like he no longer belonged to that reality. He was no longer casting the right shadows and he took on the strange appearance of mass, surreal in how it was just as clear that he gained no size. About his muzzle formed an ethereal beak; from his arms and his stumps came tentacles, dripping.

Turning to face Aradia, who now held the line in both hands, he barked out a hideous sound, a "GLUB" that Dave felt more than heard. The sound swam out in all directions to the edge of the universe, just short of the lab, and echoed back a second time, just as strong.

And nothing at all happened.

A smile played up on Aradia's robotic lips, a glimmer in her robotic eyes just below a cat-scratched gap on her face. To Dave, she explained the attack Jack had stolen from the third lusus: "...Kills Trolls."

Dave could not help but laugh as she snapped the line and Jack's final time-stolen power swept away. The demon returned, visually, to reality - at least until his next fishing trip. Aradia shoved him away, and their future selves did their work. Before Jack could turn on them, future Dave and future Aradia cut into him, through him, back and forth with ruthless speed, and their current selves took their own share. Jack's powers flashed, the lights warped bright and dim and in and out in all directions, and he fled. The last attack of each fighter cut space instead of Guardian flesh. He would be back, in an hour or three, but for now, they had won. Another day at the office.

Except... "Oh!" Current Dave said, a surreal rising feeling welling up in his chest. "Levelling." Current Aradia nodded her confirmation, but her arm was back in her hand. It would seem whatever rush had carried her through the fight had since expired.

"Morning!" called future Dave, hovering close as they all began to catch their breaths.

"y0u sh0uld get that l00ked at" future Aradia said to her past self, who had begun picking at her wound.

"Is it that bad?" current Dave asked. "What's the matter?"

"One of my..." Aradia's vocalizer was making pained sounds. "My touch sensors is on my heating line." The one that made her feel warm instead of like cold metal, Dave supposed. "Feels like my arm's on fire."

Future Dave nodded, and all four of them took out their time travel devices. "See you in two days," Dave said to his future self

His future self laughed and then replied: "Don't do anything I wouldn't have."

Their future selves slipped away and, with a few unspoken signals to Aradia, they followed. They headed forward, close enough to morning to wake Equius, but not so far away that they would miss their next watch. After all, the demon would be back. They would have to be waiting.

The horn pile was a terrible bed. And sharing it with Gamzee and Terezi, splayed out in three directions like wheel spokes, only made it worse. Rose did not actually get any sleep that night, but at the same time, did not really mind. She had only lain down about an hour to their usual dawn and she was pumped full of the adrenaline that arrived at that stage of an all-nighter. Rose would never sleep now. She just lay there, wide awake, counting ceiling tiles and smirking every time some new inside joke came to mind. She would not have relived the previous day for anything, but the evening and night had bought her some refuge.

As she lay awake she had trouble remembering if some of the more critical moments from the day before had really happened. Had she really agreed to auspistice for Vriska if she played nice? Had she really ran out of Kan's room without a single word of comfort? Had the look on Eridan's face when she had tried to keep him calm been passive, or wanting? No, no, that one was being silly.

But it was hard to be serious when her senses were so shot by the all nighter that she was having trouble coping with the present. Rose got to her feet, with only three horn blats, which she figured was the best she could hope for. She checked the others to make sure she had not woken them, and could not help but smile. She was not sure how they were doing it, but they looked so comfortable, and almost kind of sweet.

Sleeping Terezi did not exactly look peaceful, but definitely more than she ever did awake. She still had Gamzee's white face paint under her eyes, like a football player stuck on the wrong shade, and clutched her dragon cane in one hand and the dented cane they had retrieved in the middle of the night in the other, crossed like a pharaoh. Rose turned to Gamzee on the opposite side. She found his own face paint smudged from the numerous times he had tried to rub his face in the night, and a smirk on his face from whatever he was dreaming. They were both slathered in sopor and looked ridiculous, but with Gamzee it at least seemed appropriate. He was cute, sleeping. Actually, maybe he was just cute period, beyond the mask. Rose had never given it any thought, and with her mind drawn so thin at the late hour, she was not ready to give it any thought now, either. Woozy and directionless, Rose wandered out of the lab and into the hall

"No offence, but can't you just turn it off?"

"I turned the whole arm off while we were fighting. I can do it again if you'd - ribbit - like, but that's about it."

"Stupid, this is nothing but stupid."

Rose did not have to walk very far before she stumbled onto Dave and Aradia. The hall from the lab led to the nearest exit if you knew the twists and turns, and her friends had barely reached the first t-junction before dropping down to the floor. Aradia was propped up against the wall, Dave kneeling over her and rooting around and - Rose swallowed a pained gulp - inside of her left arm. The arm that Rose, unfortunately, had just the right the angle to see. Rose tucked behind the nearest corner.

"Just find the sensor before it melts to the line, or worse," Aradia said.

Dave nodded and worked the gap in her arm wider with an alchemized pocket knife. Rose had to try not to gag: surgery had never really been her idea of a good time, robot or no. "I don't even understand why you're feeling any pain," Dave muttered. "I mean, is he that much of a sadist, that he wants his robots to feel pain?"

"This is my soul's fault more than anything," Aradia replied, cutting off with a gasp of pain as Dave reached inside and began to move wires. "The soulbot is just reporting 'damage.' It's my soul that says 'damage' means 'pa-' Ah! Ah!"

Dave pulled his hand out at once. "What? What?"

"You're touching my nerve! It hurts!" Aradia snapped. Dave waited, wary and unsure of how to proceed. "...Okay," she said, simulated breathing slowed. "It's okay. You've got to move it to get it off. I get that. I can take it, I'm a Troll."

"I'm not saying you can't take it," Dave said, raising his knife again. "But you're sure you don't want to turn it off just because?"

"Yes. You don't understand, it's... just what we do, okay?"

"...Yeah."

Rose fell back a half-step, arms cradling her weight against the corner she used as cover. She considered going out to help them, but they spoke entirely in whispers, clearly edging for secrecy at least in the middle of the night. Besides, Rose knew she would be of no use at all. Even if the whole affair had not turned her stomach, Rose could not imagine that being the Seer of Light would be much help the field of electro-medical repair.

"Okay, I think I see where it is," Dave said, his multi-prototyped knife shining a penlight. "You ready?" Aradia nodded her assent and Dave reached in again. She screamed, only a moment before she cut off her own vocalizer. Silent, her pain still showed clear as day on her face and gestures. Her good arm grasped the one he used for balance, squeezing hard. Though her angle was bad, Rose thought she saw Dave tip his head towards hers in response... though perhaps he was just getting a better angle on the wound.

"...There!" Dave said, his oil-tipped hand pulled free of the gash. "Okay?"

A pause and then her vocalizer cracked. "...Okay," Aradia confirmed, the sound of her simulated breathing back on the air. She dropped her head into his shoulder and her grip slipped loose and off his arm, down towards his hand.

"How's the sensor? Can you feel here?" Dave asked, trying to appraise his work.

"No," Aradia replied, whispering straight into Dave and barely heard by Rose. "It not supposed to read so near any wound, that's fine."

"Okay. Here?" Dave said, reaching up to her shoulder. Aradia must have nodded, because Dave shuffled back, unwittingly giving Rose a better angle and ear on the proceedings, and reached down her arm. "Here?" A pause, and another nod. Finally, Dave brushed the tops of her metal fingers. "And here?"

Almost imperceptibly for Rose, Aradia's finger reached up and wrapped around Dave's thumb, as she whispered: "...Don't tease."

A moment's hesitation, mutual, and they met in a kiss. Aradia reached up with her good hand guided him down into a more comfortable angle, but beyond that the kiss served and ended on equal terms, partners here as well as about. They even met a second time on an unspoken want with a second, shorter kiss before pulling apart as one. Rose hid entirely as they parted, and could not stop smiling. It had been like this a little with Tavros and Eridan. But now that it was her friend, who she loved. Worse, her restraint had been drawn thin by an uninterrupted twenty-four hours of consciousness and so felt fit to burst. True, there was that jealous wriggle, but she could not hear it at the moment, and would not have listened if she could.

When Dave walked past her, alone, she just had to take it out on him. "Hey coolkid."

Dave turned, smooth with his hands in his pockets, and raised an eyebrow. "What the hell happened to you?"

Rose reached up to her face and touched the bags under her eyes. "I just had the worst day. But I don't want to talk about it! Do you know what I do want to talk about?"

She grinned, idiotically in hopes of driving it in harder, and Dave let out a tiny muffled groan before restoring his cool. "You know, it's not nice to spy."

"You know," Rose said, stepping in beside him as he started to walk away. "I actually sort of figured you two might hit moirails, what with all the saving each other's lives all the time thing."

"Oh no," Dave said in monotone. "You know about what we are doing with the demon. Shock and horror, our cover has failed. Also," he said in a normal tone. "Is that one of those Troll relationships? That thing you just said. I can't keep track. I try, but anything Karkat says just rolls off like I'm covered with some super-deluxe jingoist wax job that makes alien shit roll straight off me. You had better not be in the middle of one of those, Ro... oh god, you are, aren't you?" He pushed on her shoulder and she laughed. "I leave you alone for a few hours a day and next thing I know you're in some sort of stabship with Nepeta or something."

"Oh, you're a delight." Rose kept pace with him as he turned away from the lab and towards Aradia's section of the lab. "Did she go off to wake Equius?"

"Eh? Yeah. I didn't want anything to do with that shit." Dave did not look over for his reply, and he and Rose took a set of stairs together in silence. At the top of the stairs they carried on into Aradia's zone proper, and Rose caught Dave errantly brushing a hand across his lips.

Rose, her tongue licking at the corner of her own lips in her early-morning deliria, could not help but jump in. "Can't stop thinking about it, can you? Next thing we know you'll be picking out doilies together."

"Rose..."

"Big frilly doilies! John and I will come over to help you through these hard, doily selecting times, but then we'll find out it was your idea! I know these things, Strider. I'm a Seer."

"No, no. Shut up, you. You have no idea." He was still touching his lips. "You don't get it. She's a robot, but that... that was a really good kiss."

"Oh, I'm so sorry."

Dave's fingers stalled on his lower lip for a moment before he dropped it into a fist. "Hey, that's not what I meant. I mean, more power to her, but think about it! Think for one of your freudian seconds, why don't you. Assume she's a good kisser, fine, and think about it why what would be physically possible on a robot! Fuck, Equius is creepy."

"Aw, don't worry," Rose said, slapping him about the elbow. "He's covered. She hates him more than you hate him."

"Don't remind me." Dave made a fist. "And then she makes out with him too! I just don't get it yet, Rose. What am I getting in to?"

"Don't worry, Dave," Rose said. "I mean, this is all going to turn out in the end! It's good for you, good for her. If she's got kiss features, I'm certain that it probably goes-"

"Hey, hey," Dave cut her off with a finger jab to her temple. "For serious. You don't get to make robot jokes until I know you don't mean them."

Rose understood. She had shared the same worry when she first told her friends about her and Kanaya's plans to vaguely form some sort of maybe relationship when the opportunity presented, even though opportunity had not presented a thing even to this day. She had hoped they would understand, and they had, but she found it just felt better when they told her out loud. "Dave, you know that I..."

But evil thoughts were allowed their turn, and some things had to be said for the sake of humour. "..I've always know you were going to date something dead or artificial at some point. That she actually has a personality is just a plus! I mean, I always knew, deep in my heart, that one day you might be using some other creepy guy's sex toy."

And he got it, and he laughed. Rose tipped to the side and fell into him, wrapping both arms around him as they walked.

"Now you see," Dave said as they came up on their rooms. "This, I miss. You ragging me, me ragging Egbert-"

"You shamelessly flirting with Jade?"

Dave tucked an arm around her in turn. "...Hate you."

"Hate you too, Strider. Let's be kismeses and the Trolls will stop looking at us funny."

"Oh hell no," Dave said, pulling apart so that he could type in his password for his door. "I'm not getting into any of that blackrom shit, and don't let me catch you doing it either. That's just too much trouble and you know it."

Rose felt the sudden need to cough. "Uh, well... funny story..."

The door rattled open, but Dave ignored it, instead lowering his shades with a look of disbelief in his eyes. "Oh, fantastic. Who?"

Rose grinned sheepishly. "Eridan and... and Vriska. Maybe." But Dave did not hear the "maybe" as he had begun to make a throaty, gurgling sound at the mention of Vriska..

"Forget it!" he said, hand raised for her to stop. "I don't care! I'm taking a shower." He slipped into his room.

"Well I can shout all the sordid the details through the door if you want!" she called.

"Piss off, Rose!"

Rose smiled smug at his door, and was all smiles all the way five steps down the hall, until she saw her doorway. It was exactly as she had left it the morning before: a heavy stone artefact blocking the open doorway (discarded frog head), sparks now spitting out of the door mechanism and the letters "ERR" flashing over and over again on her keypad. "Damn it, Equius," she said. "I knew I forgot something."