Rose was snapped out of any daydreams she might have had about the new plan by a shower of rust flakes that coated her and John as one of the construction droids passed overhead. After that it was far too easy to remember that they were up to their eyeballs in grime, and Vriska's yelp from below at some prank of Eridan's made it impossible to ignore the height. Forty stories up on a scaffold platform built for three, passing tools into a crawlspace barely built for one. From time to time, Kanaya's voice would echo out of the tunnel only semi-coherent, and only then would it be time to act. In the interim, one had to get into the habit of never looking down or up, or risk vertigo. They even had to be careful when looking back to lessen the risk of temporary blindness from the ponderous, overpowered "lightstalks" the Trolls had erected. And everywhere, everyone had to overcome the cutting, sawing, welding, hammering, banging, crashing, shifting, shocking, humming, buzzing, echoing noise that was their constant companion, sneaking past ear protection and making it impossible to communicate at less than a shouting volume. Oh yes, Operation "Wacky Hijinks" was well underway.
Kanaya said something about a "mffng thnugmmah," and John acknowledged by tossing a Troll measuring device Rose thought had something to do with liquid pressure. Rose was impressed at how good she had gotten at listening over the noise of the construction site, but sounds coming out of the crawlspace were still impenetrable. Only the two masters of Breath were able to communicate with ease in the din, never-minding their membership in the exclusive club of people not afraid to fall off the maze of scaffolding. The scaffolds and their platforms were the low point of the project, as many of them lacked safety rails thanks to a bad captcha code. Use of game powers was at an all-time high, the ball of light in Rose's hand (for lack of nearby lightstalks) being an excellent indication. John liked to chalk it up to "enthusiasm, Rose! Everybody's rarin' to go again!"
It had all started four days after John had first gotten his idea. The three days in between were days of relative seclusion for him and Karkat; three days of Kanaya, Jade, Equius, Sollux, Aradia and Dave being kidnapped at random and reappearing later, only explaining that they had been asked "questions. Detailed questions." Rose, since she was close friends with one of the abductors and three of the abductees, had a better picture at the time, but her privilege ended when the fourth day had it all come out.
"We have," Karkat said after he had everyone's attention, "one hundred and eleven days." Fourteen of them were present for the speech - Dave and Aradia still absent and their absence still, at large, unexplained. "The day after, we rest. You can fucking thank Egbert for that. The very next day," he continued, "we kill the demon."
The uproar made it impossible to continue for some time, though judging from Karkat's face it had come in under expected levels. When they had stopped, he hit them with the details.
In essence, they were going to build the world's largest rat trap and then they themselves would play the role of the snapping bar. To avoid unmasking Dave and Aradia by revealing Jack's tactics, Karkat had neatly summarized the need to trap him "just to be sure, dipshit." The one hundred eleven days were going to be spent constructing and testing a massive battle platform, to be floated out to meet Jack away from the lab just in case there was a chance to retreat. This platform would serve not only to accommodate those of their group that could not fly through use of Dreamselves or powers, but to seal Jack in with them during the fight. While they were sure he could rupture the place given sufficient time and effort, all they had to do was to prevent him the opportunity. Eleven different powers (Gamzee's nonsense excluded), would be folded up into the very steel and rock of the platform to redirect, ground or otherwise weaken Jack's attacks against the platform and its holding field, at least for "long enough." Karkat made it perfectly clear that any other efforts: automatic guns, or attempts to dampen Jack's powers directly, were secondary. Dave privately admitted that this was because they would never work.
To use as a base, Jade and Kanaya were called on to bring in an asteroid to the lab's hangar bay, a sixty storey dry dock of that dug into the lab's asteroid and had probably once been used for mid-sized warships. Equius had disassembled enough of his robots to find out which spare parts had once belonged to the large, spherical construction droids that had roamed Alternia, and they had alchemized from there. The droids worked with remarkable speed, more or less facilitating the entire hundred-day timeframe from what would probably have taken years. With Sollux reprogramming around the clock like he liked so much, the rest of them were dedicated to constant fine-tuning. Powers were assigned and abstractly misappropriated. The Seer of Mind was set to task on deciding Jack's ten most likely first responses. The Rogue of Heart was running hydraulics. More appropriately, the Sylph and Witch of Space were everywhere, performing rapid calculations and making sure the platform would be able to lift its own weight with the help of a few dozen magnified repulser systems from Sburb. Dave and Aradia, when they were around at all, were working on the capture field that would keep Jack inside the platform, physically and temporally. But for many of them, like the mistresses of Light or the Prince of Hope, all there was to do was to work under a more appropriately gifted fellow.
"Okay," Kanaya said clearly as she pulled herself out of the crawlspace. She was wearing jeans - some old ratty pair of Jade's - which Rose knew she could not stand. "I'm going to need a half-dozen rivets. I need you to take this to Sollux, Rose, and... I think I should replace some of the coolant pipes, the droids put in some that were frankly out-of-sorts." Kanaya passed Rose a notepad, the pages covered in math. The way Jade put it, she and Kanaya had not really understood the math their Space powers spat at them at first. That had changed when Sollux had insisted they learn real notation after Jade asked him to re-calibrate an antenna "clockwise and a little to the left," and then "No, not that much left." Besides notes, the pad was absolutely covered in the shattered-glass-patterned fingerprints the Trolls left everywhere. The entire asteroid and scaffold was covered with shattered glass and the Humans' whorls and spirals now that everyone was constantly covered in sludge.
Rose nodded understanding of her orders, and was part-way through working out her route when she saw Kanaya cast her a smile, just for the sake of smiling. It was like a personal message of nothing that needed to be said.
"See you around, Rose!" John said as he returned from the toolbox, still looking ridiculous in his headband. ("Egbert, it is not the eighties, how many times-" "You see, Dave, that's where you're wrong." "Did you just tell the Knight of Time that he's wrong about your terrible favourite decade being deader than big hair and The Muppet Babies?" "Well, the way I see it...") Rose returned the smile to Kanaya, almost in secret as she squelched the light ball out of existence as though afraid John would catch on, and descended one of the infinite ladder rungs that lined the asteroid. From there the route was down, up and across the overwhelming number of paths across the scaffolding to the main dock, the only part of the entire assembly that did not shake every few times you set your weight on it. It was a far way from where Rose began.
They had been at the construction for just over two weeks now, or so Dave had told her, two days prior. It had been the first time she had ever seen him at breakfast, but she was not surprised to find him face down beside his thrice-ironic Lucky Charms in a polka dot bowl and a Mickey Mouse spoon. She had said hello, he had said "Mmrmph." She had said asked how he was, he had said "Nrm... Day forty-six, hour nine." She had asked what, he had said "...Oh, sorry. I thought you said 'Who?'" If it had only been two weeks, progress had been good. She knew to thank the droids more than anything, but the progress on her teammates was still good. She saw it as she walked and climbed to the dock: people talking, laughing and working harder than she would have ever expected from them. While only Feferi and Tavros dared to be truly optimistic, Rose saw the beauty of John's plan in how it subtly crept into their language. Every time someone said "In a few months, we'll..." or "...seriously, one day..." it worked its way deeper to their core. It was happening: the future, free of the lab, with another chance to live.
Vriska rapped Eridan on the shoulder as Rose passed - provoked, Rose guessed. "Move the hell over!" she said. Eridan did not, but Vriska ignored him this time.
Because she never repeats herself, Rose thought. She had a better grasp on them now, but far from perfect. The past two weeks had been so unlike the ones before that Rose hardly believed it. For starters, she could not shake the impression that Vriska and Eridan were trying to ease her into their kismesissitude, even though that seemed too polite for Vriska and too, well, clever for Eridan. So far, her auspistice work had been simple but frustrating. Except for the odd shove, the couple tended away from physical contact, leaving Rose to casually eavesdrop on their back-and-forth acid and to answer their trolling at odd hours of the day. It was hard to bury her initial Human reaction to their troubles. If two friends were fighting like this, she would have immediately told them to suck it up and apologize. To keep on the caliginous road, Rose had to check herself before every pester or rare in-person interruption. What made it easy was that she could still choose to do nothing, correctly, on a regular basis, as she chose to do at that moment.
"Witch."
"Asshole."
Rose rolled her eyes. This was nothing. Rose was still prepared for far worse, and at least she had her friends, old and new. Between the five of them, Rose was certain she could always find something to distract herself with, though Gamzee did not always tend toward "activities" so much as "the same observations, repeatedly" And then there was Kanaya. In a manner of speaking, the time Rose spent with Kanaya had not much changed in activity. She still sat on the desk beside her computer as they chatted. She would come over to her room on request to give opinion about new outfits or to find herself recommended with new young adult novels, and she would have Kanaya over to her room for a swap of the same. It was more the atmosphere that had changed: little gestures, knowing she'd be asked how she was feeling and not just as a pleasantry, smiles. They didn't touch much more than before. Still, Kanaya tended to dwell more than she had when she adjusted Rose's hair and there was usually a hug goodnight, in whatever form Kanaya's sore points allowed.
"Hey, Rose!" Feferi greeted once Rose had touched down on solid ground. She was near the water bottles, and she dashed some of one onto her face. She shook it off vigorously before coming over to chat. "How's it going?"
"It's not bad," she said. "I've got a few requests for Sollux." That was all she cared to say. Rose was starting to get wary of conversations with Feferi, ever since the Troll ex-Princess had decided they should be "auspistice buddies!" She had been awfully keen to look over Rose's technique and while her advice tended to be sound, but Rose just could not help but think that she was looking for something to do. Equius and Aradia were more established and certainly more active when it came to their relationship, but Equius just buckled under Feferi so easily that all Aradia had to do was to walk away with a victorious grin on her metal face. Rose respected that Feferi had begun to back off just to maintain balance, but she just wished she would stop coming to her instead.
"So how are they dooooing?" she asked, straight to the usual. It was much easier to talk at a normal volume there on the dock, though the light of Aradia's nearby arc welding cast odd shadows down the hall in front of them.
"Vriska and Eridan?" Rose asked just out of politeness. "Oh I don't know. They're not letting their arguments get in the way of construction, I think that's all we can ask."
"All anyone but you can ask!" Feferi said. She handed Rose a fresh water bottle, which she accepted before taking two more for John and Kanaya. "I mean, all up there, far away from anyone, unaperchable!" Feferi batted her eyelashes. "Why, two young Trolls might just get DANG-EROUS ID-EAS!"
"Do you mean caliginous romantic activity or... caliginous dangling-your-partner-off-the-edge-of-the-causeway activities?" Feferi shrugged. Rose supposed Vriska and Eridan weren't quite at the latter's level of extreme commitment yet, but teens will be teens. "They're not exactly 'unaperchable' right now..." she said. Reaching her destination, she called out: "Sollux!" and tossed her notepad into Sollux's cubicle-fort of various boxes. He snapped it up without a second word. Those days, Rose barely saw any more than the tip of his fingers.
"They're not?" Feferi asked. "But how could they... urgh, Tavros!"
Of course. Rose was not sure why she had even had to say. Tavros did spend time with Gamzee those days, but it was clear he was more-or-less scared of Terezi and so he tended to stay away and could most often be seen with either his matesprit or Vriska. Technically it was his job to help communicate from one side of the rig to the other with the help of John and the Windy Thing. Without direct orders, Rose had last seen him on Vriska and Eridan's platform, just below John and exactly where one would have expected him to be.
"How are they supposed to have any private hate-time with Tavros hovering over their shoulders?" Feferi asked as Rose led her to the alchemizer they had installed nearby. Sollux had computed exactly what Kanaya needed in under the time it took them to cover the distance, and Rose found a circuit board waiting for her. Not wanting to damage the board, she immediately captchalogued it at the bottom of her tree. "You should talk to him."
"I'll talk to him," she reassured. "Not that he's..."
"No, he's not going to listen at all," Feferi agreed, right on cue. She downed the rest of her water, collected another and jumped ahead of Rose, taking the down ladder instead of the up. "I'm going to go check on Aradia. Don't need two sets of glubbing kismeses at once, do we? See you later, Rose!"
"Bye, Feferi," Rose said. She cast a look over to Aradia with shielded eyes, and watched Feferi approach with her own arm up. Aradia heard her call and stopped her welding to have an uninterrupted conversation. Rose thought back to earlier in the week when Karkat had tried to interrupt Aradia and was met with nothing but a blazing wall of light. Aradia did not seem to stop working for just anyone. Equius annoyed her too much to actually stop. She had once stopped for Dave, who came to greet her with ultra-prototyped shades and a squeeze of her shoulder. On the other hand, he had come to talk about their "real work," which meant she would have had to drop everything one way or another. She stopped for Feferi because talking, Rose felt, was the relationship. The same might have been said about moirallegience, but Vriska only seemed to have snarks or overt, sing-song, saccharine things to say to Aradia when Rose was in earshot. Still, Aradia seemed to listen even if she kept up her work, as loudly as posssible.
"How're things going, Aradia?" Feferi asked.
"I'm all right, Feferi, how are-"
"COVER YOUR EARS!"
Everyone but Aradia quickly reset their ear protection and slammed their hands over them for good measure as Equius set something alive that rolled over over other sounds and eardrumbs like a Giclops. When it had died down, they held their hands there out of practice as Equius shouted "Ridiculous!" once or twice before following up that all was "CLEAR!"
"Sorry about that, Feferi," Aradia said.
"It's no problem at all!" Feferi said with a smile. "Thank you very much for saying, though!"
Rose took back to the ladder. Rose wanted to like Aradia, but she had so little to work with. Somewhere, probably between the constant life-saving and honest tenderness, Dave had filed Aradia as totally un-ironic and tended not to talk about her at all in favour of his usual shlop. Rose found this absolutely precious, but as gossip it was useless to her. She had tried to explain her want it to Kanaya, one date. They had been sitting back to back, knitting, outside in Skaia's soft world-light, and Kanaya had not understood. Rose's tried to explain how friends might not be fond of someone who took away the time they used to have with a friend, especially when all they got in return was an awkward ringside seat to "all that face-sucking." And between John, who tended to get Dave's off-time attention, Dave's own private time and Jade, Rose had had so very little time with Dave in the first place. After all, the patrols came first.
Finally she had swallowed her pride and asked him on request from a puppy-eyed Jade (but actually from a puppy-eyed John). He tried to deflect the question at first. He said that most of the time he spent at "work" had nothing to do with actually policing Jack, but rather with making absolutely sure that he never did what they did. It was a full-time job to manipulate Time to keep him from joining up with one of his past or future selves. "So we break together," he had said. "Join each other's sit'n'watch, talking about Mesoamerican culture."
"Talking about what?" Rose had asked from his bed, as he continued to play his musical turntables. Jade, lying next to Rose, continued to silently bop her head to the beat.
"Hey, a gentleman finds common interests."
"I'm going to assume this sudden interest of yours has its roots in your latent love of the preserved dead, Strider," Rose said. "Is it mummies, human sacrifices, or-! Excuse... or is it, possibly-!" Rose attempted to finish with "both" but was cut off again by Jade, who had been trying to derail the entire sentence by tickling Rose in the ribs.
"Macuhuitls," Dave had said, though Rose had barely heard him.
"Gesundheit," Rose managed to snark between laughs.
Dave had looked back at them as Rose tried to squirm away from Jade without surrendering the bed. He tossed his head the way he did to communicate an eye roll. "Shit, Rose, read a book!"
Dave was wearing stubble intentionally now, Rose had noticed.
"Hey Jade," Rose said to her friend as she passed her on one of the platforms. Jade smiled warily as she passed, adjusting the sweatband she was wearing in solidarity with John.
"Two hours to the bell, huh?" Jade remarked, and Rose nodded. Karkat kept them on a strict ten-to-six schedule, save when he grabbed someone from their free time to work with Aradia and Dave after-hours. Jade was a little wobbly. "I'm getting tired of all this up and down."
"Why don't you teleport?" Rose asked.
"Karkat says I should be 'strength training,'" Jade said with a roll of her eyes. "I guess there's not really that much of a hurry, huh? See you at dinner, okay?" Rose nodded as she headed down towards Equius on one of the few extended platforms. Jade saw her looking and made a face for Rose to see.
"Oh hush," Rose said. "Everyone's all jealous of you."
"Everyone should douse their heads!" Jade hissed back, but disappeared below the edge.
Nepeta passed Rose not long after, coming down a ladder from above. Rose fought to hide the hiss of breath through her teeth as she caught sight of Nepeta's leg. Since the Trolls had been in the same spawning batch and had landed on Alternia near the same day, it only stood to reason that everyone but Aradia would be moulting within the next few months. Karkat was now giving out orders in between furtive and enraged scratching at his forehead and back. Terezi was still pre-Moult, but Gamzee had not done a thing about his new full-body dandruff except to look at his shoulder from time to time and start cackling. Sollux's dreamself had begun to gradually shift over time, and Feferi had a moult on the sole of her foot that was forcing her to nurse a limp. All that said and done, Rose had not actually seen the moult until that moment, on Nepeta's back leg. It was covered with what looked like a green scab the size of Rose's hand and half again, with a white core. But the wound was not the wound was not the only sign of Nepeta's moult. She passed Rose with a smile, not seeming to mind her wound, save for a wince she gave after jumping down the ladder. Equius himself looked like had gotten in a tiff with his moirail, but those were his own scratch marks covering his body from head to toe in rough blue, raw and sore. Still, compared to Nepeta, Rose did not pity him in the slightest.
"Miss Harley, could you pass me my electrical current measuring device?"
"R-right," Jade said, passing Equius the nearby ammeter.
"Thank you, Miss Harley, I do appreciate." Rose scoffed. Equius probably wouldn't thank her for anything short saving his life, but Jade? Well, that wasn't Jade's fault he thought she was some sort of surviving royalty. Jade returned to the toolbox and occupied herself with that. It was clear that being around Equius was bothering her, and more than usual. He was shirtless. It was hot at the construction site, hot enough to make one ignore the strange things that dripped everywhere. More than a few of them, like Vriska and her jacket, had decided to dress down. Dave and Eridan were shirtless as well - Rose got the impression that aquatic trolls were not quite built to sweat like their land-based counterparts - but it was Equius that was drawing eyes. Rose had never considered muscles as something she found attractive, and Equius was still very young, but culture played its invisible hands. Poor Jade looked more and more embarassed every day. And Nepeta just made it worse. Almost certainly mimicking Equius, she had shown up for every day of work in a short tank top and cut-off pants with an oil rag stuffed in a pocket. She was trim, toned and (by the way she continued to invade personal space) either completely or not-at-all oblivious to all of the above. Together, to Rose and most of the Trolls, they were surprise gifts from the bisexual gods. Poor Jade, poor Jade, poor Jade.
Bang. "Back!" Nepeta chirped, once again calling a warning after jump instead of before. Jade ceased her yelp of surprise and stood back to catch her breath. Nepeta walked past, loudly chewing some gum she had alchemized from John's collection. She headed over to Equius with a tray that still, despite the height of her jump, contained a clutch of circuitry. "How's it going?" she asked. She was covered with purple-black oil that looked like it had burst out onto her entire right side.
"Well enough, considering this a thrice-redundant system," Equius declared. "This engine controls the... out of the light, please, Nepeta." Nepeta set down the try and then moved over to Equius' opposite shoulder, practically lounging on his back. "This engine controls emergency backup rotors for the physical roofing system. The others are working just fine, considering they're not actually hooked up to the system yet, but this one is being more trouble than it's worth. I may have to replace it entirely."
"Don't want Jack to get away after we've caught him!" Nepeta concluded. She stood up and drummed a quick beat on Equius' bare back with gloved hands, leaving behind uneven oil prints. She then paused and, as though unwilling or incapable of just standing there, caroused about the platform for a moment before glomping Jade and pretending to fall asleep.
"...Jade?" Nepeta asked sleepily as Jade tried to meet Rose's eye in a plea for help.
"Y-yes?"
But all Nepeta had to say was "Mmmm..." before falling asleep again.
"...Perhaps you should go speak to Vantas about a new task, Nepeta?" Equius asked over his shoulder.
"Nope!" she said happily. "Just hafta-" Somewhere up on Tavros' level, a pipe exploded loudly. A sound not unlike that of a steaming kettle broke through the air. Rose just managed to overhear Nepeta's anticlimactic "...Whuh-oh," before covering her ears. The sound died under the repeat sound of buckling metal, and Rose freed her ears just in time to hear "Bye Jade!" before Nepeta darted up the ladder three rungs at a time. Whatever the problem was, she had soon patched it with a trip to the nearest set of valves. Karkat watched her as she worked and only after did he unleash the lecture he had been holding in. "AND ANOTHER THING!" Nepeta just smiled at him. As he continued, she outright set her elbows up on his shoulders and her head on her hands as though his shoulders were a table on which to lay. She pushed back her hair and nodded along with what he was saying, big eyes and twitching nose focused, like he were the most interesting thing in the world. Then, all at once, she gave up all pretense and blew a pink bubble of gum in his face.
"Hey, hey, don't you get that sticky crap anywhere near me," he said.
Nepeta reached out to brush at a smudge on his face. "But you're already covered in sticky crap!" she chirped. "And poor little red scritchies," she cooed, tickling at his cheek and leaving behind more of the oily substance. A sly grin took over her face then, and Nepeta slowly leaned forward to whisper something in Karkat's ear. Rose could not make out the exact words, but she could have not gotten more than a few out before Karkat jumped back. He removing her by the wrists and surrendered his tirade in an embarrassed huff. Nepeta watched him go with a mix of coy amusement and disappointment, but when a droid fluttered near she called to it and bounded off, chattering to it and skipping on one foot alongside the edge of a nearby bridge.
"I will never understand that one," Rose said aloud. Another passing drone beeped in negative reply.
"C4T GOT YOUR TONGUE, K4RK1TTY?" Terezi asked as he passed. She handed her wrench to Gamzee and he absent-mindedly collected it in a hand that already contained two Robertson screwdrivers and a pencil. "Because it sure sounded like she knows how to use hers, the way you flipped the fuck out."
"Shut the-" But he stopped, just like Rose would have expected. Karkat was obviously curbing himself around Terezi those days. Rose suspected that Kanaya had something to do with that, given an caution her girlfriend had passed along the day before, and that only made it more interesting to watch. "I could beat Nepeta in a debate any day," he said instead. "It's just loud."
"I wasn't talking about talking," Terezi said when he was two steps on his way to freedom. Karkat cringed and clutched a fist too tight to be comfortable. Terezi sauntered over, which was her usual disposition around Karkat those days. As far as Rose understood it, they still had not talked about their relationship, but the mood between them had changed almost as much as it hand between the new couples. Karkat had become the plaintive subordinate, quite unlike him, as though he still clung to the hope that if their dreaded break-up conversation did come, he could do so on more favourable emotional terrain. Terezi had become the unobtainable: deliberately elegant even in lich-torn jeans and a ragged Libra t-shirt, cackling and victoriously grinning through each conversation; sneaking up behind him in the lab and blowing in his ear.
Today she was less subtle: "You know," she said, "you should honestly consider that... 'bath.'"
Rose wanted to tell them both that they were being horrible to one another, but Gamzee of all people had beaten her to it days before, telling them both that they were being "mOtHeRfUcKiNg BiTcHeS!" All this had accomplished (if accomplishing something had been the intent - Rose was having so much trouble telling for sure with Gamzee) was to make Terezi fall back onto the horn pile, kicking her feet in the air and letting out stream of uncontrollable laughter. Karkat had tried to slink away, but Kanaya had caught his attention and called him into the nearby chair. There, she rubbed his back while he repeatedly reassured her that "I don't care. Why should I care?" He slammed his fist onto the desk only once before Kanaya caught it firm. With Rose knowing her quadrant and Terezi grinning upside down at Gamzee, Rose had slipped off find Eridan and Vriska (debating ice cream versus sorbert in the kitchen to the point of violence). There at least, she could tell someone they were an idiot (clearly the winner should have been gelato) without breaking protocol.
Karkat took a step away, and somehow walked smack into Gamzee. Even Rose had not seen how he had managed to get from behind Terezi to behind Karkat, but there he was, plain as day. "Hey best friend," he drawled, sounding almost sad.
"I do not want to talk to you," Karkat said, trying to edge past.
"Yeah, I know," Gamzee said, frowning. "I was just hoping you might wanna come chill tonight after our fucking waldorf historias."
"He's, uh, making Waldorf salad," Terezi clarified from behind. "I don't think anyone's gonna like it but he doesn't listen to me."
"Gamzee," Karkat said, "when have I ever 'chilled' with you? I'm not going to fucking start now!"
He pushed past and headed up in Rose's direction, as Gamzee called after him. "I just figured you needed to motherfucking chill! motherfucker needs to chill," he repeated to Terezi, who patted his hand as they returned to work. Karkat paused slightly at the sound of Gamzee's tone, but seemed to pushed the thought aside. He vaulted up next to Rose, who had head the quiet tone before and took it easily in stride.
"What are you looking at?" Karkat said toward Rose without even bothering to check.
"A motherfucker that needs to fucking chill," Rose said. He scoffed and tried to push by her as well, so Rose leaned back against the rails and watched him go, at least for a few rungs. "Gamzee hangs out with Terezi after dinner, I hope you realize."
Karkat dropped down to the platform, which reacted as though it was just short of plunging into the pit and take everyone with it. "What?"
"Gamzee hangs out with Terezi," Rose repeated. "He was trying to get you along so you two might patch things up."
Karkat stared Rose hard in the eye, as if he could tell the truth of things through only a stare, but still needed to ask: "...Gamzee?"
Rose pushed him away. "Yes!"
"Why?"
"I don't honestly know," Rose replied. "He... does stuff like that!"
"No he doesn't! But..." Karkat, suddenly conspiratorial and ignoring Rose's earlier motions for personal space, edged closer and whispered. "Tell me really:" he said, "...have I screwed my chances with Terezi?"
"Honestly?"
"...Yeah," Karkat said, suddenly less confident.
"Mm-hm."
"Bullshit!" Karkat spat, and began to restlessly pace. "If you thought that was true, you wouldn't have called me back down here."
"Oh Karkat, don't be so trite," Rose said back, resisting the urge to shout. "You had your chance. I gave it to you! And you blew it! Too many 'sharp pointy rocks'!"
"Hey, hey!" Karkat rounded on her again. "I admit that this once again falls into the ever-expanding bin of Past Me being a traitorous nubsucker! ...I just don't think this mistake's fatal." Rose harrumphed and Karkat continued uninvited. "Hey, you don't know what this is like! You've never had the first girl you've ever... really... liked run off to be with the clown!"
"Hey," Rose shot back, "first off, she's not with Gamzee. But if she was, I'd appreciate it if you'd not act like he was such a surprise, because he's my friend, and he's supposed to be yours. In fact, second off: he is still one of your two best friends. He's trying to spend time with you, the least you could do would be to-"
"Has she gotten high with him?"
"...What?" Rose had to try very hard to remind herself just how responsible Karkat had been over the past few weeks, taking charge with John's plan. Maybe he had earned these little outbursts, if more preferably towards some manner of mirror or empty room. "How is that any of your-"
"Have you?"
That was it. Rose would have to await the return of her fearless co-leader some other day. "Here's an idea, Karkat," she said, grabbing his shirt by the shoulder. He immediately snapped an arm up to grab her by the wrist. She could feel the strength in his hands far outstripping her own, but Karkat's restraint won out. Somewhere deep inside, he was still the responsible young man Rose would have preferred to talk to, and perhaps realized just how silly he was sounding.
"...you want me to go talk to her instead," he mumbled at last, trying not to make it sound like a question. Rose nodded. "Fine."
Rose followed him to the top of the ladder as he descended. "I think you know from your movies that pity makes all the great leads do stupid things, Karkat,"
"Don't patronize me, Lalonde."
"...Good luck," Rose said at last.
"Yeah," he said. "...Speaking of."
Rose looked up at his cue and jumped back into the railing in surprise, jostling the platform. Karkat clung tight to the ladder below and sent up a string of expletives at her to help his grip. Vriska ignored them both, save to roll her eyes at Rose as she waited for her to recover.
"I swear..." she said. She was floating soundlessly, just above the platform. "Come on, I need your help." Vriska held out a hand to Rose, who eyed it warily.
"I can climb, thanks."
"Ugh, this is f8ster!" Vriska insisted, and grabbed Rose by the hand. Rose gave up, knowing this would be a senseless battle, and allowed Vriska to loop her arms around her waist. Vriska's dreamself powers were able to lift them both handily. They landed on the platform alongside Eridan, who was muttering to himself as Tavros stood by, looking his usual awkward.
"Alright morons," Vriska said, depositing Rose on the banister such that she had to grab hold of Vriska's sleeve to keep from falling back. "Let's shut this up once and for all. Rose, tell the Purple Wonder here that he can't hog Tavros all the damn time."
Rose, having returned safely to her feet, heaved a heavy sigh. "You must be kidding me. You cannot still be this debate, you children."
"Hey!" Eridan snapped, still shirtless and nursing a water bottle of his own, "I was going to go about this nice and mature about it when she started getting her bitch on!"
"That is technically true, if, uh, crude," Tavros said. "But I'd say you were getting just as into it as she was."
Eridan looked hurt. "Oh, come on Tav, it's just because we're all spades is all. wwhat wwas i supposed to do, just stand there"
Rose looked up, from one whiny charge to the other, before settling on the other. "Tavros. Come."
She led him over to the hole in the platform serviced by the up-and-down ladder. There, she stood directly between him and his two friends, who immediately began snipping at one another instead. "Tavros," Rose said. "Want to do everyone here a favour?"
"Well I... I certainly think that could help, wouldn't it?" Tavros said, looking back at the other two. "But I was just going to, you know, leave."
"Pardon?" Rose said, and Tavros nodded.
"Yeah, I mean, Eridan's my matesprit and Vriska's my friend but I think they're just being... uh... stupid. iF I CAN SAY THAT. So I'm going to go spend some time, like, without them."
Rose was agape. She wished so badly that Tavros had been able to find the strength to say that to the Feuding Wonders instead of her, but all the same in the end. "Tavros, I could kiss you! But that's Eridan's job and I couldn't possibly hate you enough right now. Get on, go!"
Despite Rose's purely demonstrative motions to the ladder, Tavros stalled. "Well, that's part of the thing, Rose, because I'm not sure where to, uh, go. I think Gamzee's busy right now, because I can hear Karkat from, uh-"
"...FUCKING DUMBASSES, ALL OF YOU..."
Tavros gulped. "...from here."
"Okay," Rose said. "I've got a new plan. You're supposed to be at the other side of the platform from John, right? So how about you go help Jade with the math she's doing. It'll keep you between her and Sollux and uh... I think she'd appreciate the company."
Tavros gulped. "I'm not so sure I'd be able to make, uh, that any less awkward with all, uh, that." It was only then that Rose noticed the glove-bound handprint Nepeta had left on his shoulder at some point earlier in the day. It almost looked as though she had pinned him down after a tackle, safety concerns thrown to the wind. "...but I could try."
"Whatever you think is best, Tavros," Rose said, and got him to smile just a bit.
"I'll, uh, see you later, guys!" he called, to no response. From there he stepped off the platform and used a combination of Breath and his robot boot's haphazard rocket attachment to descend, characteristically smacking his horns into the floor on his way by.
That accomplished, Rose turned back to the real body of work. "Okay patients," she started. But they were not listening.
"You piece of shit, Vris!"
Vriska rubbed her hands together. "Oooh, ooh, did that one hit a nerve, Eridan?"
"Wait, what did I miss?" Rose asked. She did not allow her her subconscious to remind her that she did not want to know. It was bad for business.
"Eh?" Vriska looked over her shoulder. "Oh. Brought up Feferi."
"Don't you bring my moirallegience into this, Vris, gog dammit." He jabbed her just below the neck with a finger. "And don't you dare compare it to Tav, because I swear-"
"You'll what?" Vriska cooed back. "Poke me again?"
"It's against the rules," he growled, but his frown turned to a sneer after a moment's thought. "Besides, I've learned my lesson, while you've learned shit. I didn't tell Fef how I felt and I got kicked to the curb, so I told Tav how I felt and look what happened, would you? But you... oh, well that's different, isnt it vris? you havent learned a damn thing How long's your list of relationship failures?"
Rose flinched at that, acutely aware of just how close Eridan was to the edge of the platform and, on a more primal level, worried about how neutral she would be if the discussion shifted to Vriska's moiraillegiance with Kanaya. Vriska appeared to be simply taken aback, but started to smile and she slowly stepped toward her kismesis. She caught one of his legs in her instep and pressed her body just short of his. Oh for the love of God, Rose thought. You idiot, don't just stand there.
"You want to talk about rules and limits, Eridan?" She raised a finger to his face, drawing it past his bare chest as she went, and Rose watched as his anger seemed to seep out of him with each inch she closed between them. Rose briefly tried to figure out a way to communicate to him to step away or, better, to push her away, but her stomach was sick just listening the two of them. The thought of encouraging their hate made it flip. "Here's a limit for you. It'll be our little game! If you touch me again in the next three days, I break whatever you touched me with."
As she barred her teeth at him, Vriska tested Eridan by pushing her finger towards his nose, and he backed off dutifully. Despite, he spoke up. "And if I win?" Eridan asked, showing more gall than Rose would have allowed him. Vriska just laughed.
"Right, Eridan," she said as she climbed over the railing herself. "Right." And then she leapt over and went into an outright dead drop for two storeys before catching herself with her powers.
"...So," Eridan said to Rose, though he continued to scowl at his hands. "What do you think?"
Rose shook herself to chase away the vertigo. "What do you think?" They both said it, independent of one another, and only talking to Kanaya convinced Rose that it wasn't some sort of ashen custom. Only Eridan seemed to be looking for genuine criticism while Vriska seemed to be angling something less substantial. Rose imagined "applause."
"I think you could have done better," Rose said in her standard non-answer. It was all she could provide at moments like this, when she was not in the mood to pretend that two people could honestly be drawn together in currents of bile. "Eridan, Tavros went off to do his own thing."
"Yeah, I saw. I'll see him later." Eridan glanced towards the work Vriska had abandoned before the fight. He crushed his hand into a fist, and Rose could only imagine who he had been picturing, sitting in his palm.
"Eridan," Rose repeated. "Don't fight over him any more, okay? It's not fair."
Eridan shook out his palm. "If Vris can't sort her friends into quadrants, how's that my problem?"
"It's not fair to Tavros."
"...oh." Eridan sighed. "Fuck, Roz, you're right, I'm just a little hot-headed." He looked down at the platforms below them. "Where is he? I should tell him I'm sorry."
"Forget it," Rose said, returning to the ladder. "Like you said, you'll see him tonight. I'll talk to Vriska later, okay?"
"Could I?" he said, and when she glared at him, he cheekily supplied: "It'd be a great fucking opening! And besides," he said, "it's not so much a fight about Tav so much as... Okay, fine, Roz." He shook his head in disappointment but then, as he sometimes did, smiled to her.
Rose smiled back out of politeness. He passed smiles on from time to time, usually when she had done something to repair the tack-and-tar-lined bridge that lay between him and Vriska, and she just did not know how to feel about them. As she climbed the ladder that led to John and Kanaya, she was able to see beyond, with no scaffolding in the way. There she caught sight of the purple-reflected light of Jade and Kanaya's False Derse through the partially open hangar doors above. It was all that stood between the Derse Dreamers and the Horrorterrors. Still, considering Eridan and Vriska in the moon's gentle hypnosis, Rose was reminded how Humans had come to the word "lunatic."
John's head popped up in front of the False Derse, his cockeyed grin all she could see for a moment before he finished pressing his glasses back to his face. "Bad day at the office?" he asked, extending a hand to her.
"You have no idea," she said. She held one arm in the other as she looked out over the edge of the platform, the very top of their operation at present. Kanaya was nearby, pulling herself out of the tunnel again. "Hi, Dusty," Rose greeted. Kanaya made a face and blew a lock of hair out of her face, kicking up an unfortunate cloud of the dirt that sent her coughing. Rose could not help but laugh, especially with John there to aggravate her. Kanaya took them both demurely in stride.
Rose remembered how, as they had been sitting back to back under the light of Skaia, talking about Dave, Kanaya had asked if her friends disliked her for the same reasons Rose was worried about Aradia. Rose had tried to clarify.
"Not 'dislike.' Or... at least one certainly hopes 'not dislike.' Losing time with your friend can just... make you neutral where you want to be in favour. I mean, it's your friend and you want to like the stuff they love, even if just a little, but sometimes it's hard."
"With the face-sucking," Kanaya repeated.
"Of course," Rose said, at the time still comfortable with her choice of euphemism. She purled her yarn and tried to gauge Kanaya's reaction to what she was saying. "Of course," Rose said, "you and I haven't been doing any distracting sucking-of-faces, so what could my friends possibly have to dislike?"
Kanaya had replied with a hesitant, stammering laugh; Rose had bitten her tongue and made a mental note to take any inquiries from her nervous new girlfriend more seriously from then on. Wanting to make up for her slip, Rose had turned about. Kanaya's moulting had, at the time, moved off of her back and down to her legs, so Rose decided to gently rub her matesprit's back. Her hand ran over, from smooth bottom-left to the odd partially-armoured new flesh of the top-right. Kanaya had calmed at first before, suddenly, she shifted away. Rose's stomach had sank in worry that she had pushed a bit too far, but she still took her hint and returned to how they had been sitting, if a little further apart. They stayed that way until, time passing, Kanaya returned as they worked.
Ten minutes later, Kanaya had leaned back her head, her straight horn brushing just past Rose's hair. She had sighed, content, and whispered something soft about the world-light shining down on them. It was in that exact moment, as she had reached up to run a finger through Kanaya's hair, that Rose had given up any hope of convincing Dave to surrender more time to his friends.