Hey guys, sorry I haven't updated in a while, just life getting in the way and well...I've had a very emotionally tiring week since last Sunday a good childhood friend and old classmate was in a car accident where he suffered head and spinal injuries.

He died on Monday. He also saved 5 lives from donating his organs.

I've been strong throughout the week but earlier this morning we had a service for him, I ended up crying about 3 or 4 times...

Since he was MAD about football and other sports, the service was held at the football aval and we named the west goal posts after him :')

I just felt like I needed to inform you why I took a while to update :( Ah, hopefully I didn't bum you guys out!

Chapter Six

John, Jade, Jane, Jake and Meenah arrived about half an hour later. Each of the adults had brought their own gifts and Jane had baked a cake for the occasion.

By then, Roxy had passed out, Aranea was in the kitchen corner, trying to bring Karkat out of his little streamer den, and Dirk was just sitting on the couch, a half-eaten biscuit hanging from his mouth as he nursed Dave and Rose on his lap.

"Sup beaches, the party has arrived!" Meenah announced as she strutted into the room. Jake and Jane both looked flustered as they followed the sassy troll.

Dirk raised an eyebrow at the royal blood and finished off his biscuit "You do realise this is just a kids party?"

Meenah just rolled her eyes and walked into the kitchen without saying anything to see what the heck Aranea was doing.

"I'm sorry we're late, John had a bit of an accident on the way and Meenah was being…Meenah." Jane sighed as she sat the container holding the birthday cake she made on the coffee table.

" 'S cool, Areana had to drag Roxy's drunk arse all the way here." Dirk pointed to the passed out girl on the other side of the couch, mouth hanging open and a small trail of drool that just passed his lips.

"O-oh dear," Jane looked around the room, now noticing all the colourful decorations. "Umm, I think you may have gotten a little overboard with the decorations…"

"Nah! It's little dudes birthday 'n all."

Jane didn't pry any further into the matter, knowing Dirk will keep coming up with excuses.

"Strider! It's been quite a while!" Jake said in his usual jolly tone. Dirk smiled at his friend, extending his arm out for a fist bump.

"Sup?"

"Not a whole lot but I was informed that you've, umm, adopted?"

Dirk smirked at the question, "I guess you could say that."

As if on cue, there was a loud screech followed by a sound somewhere between crying in fear and screaming with rage. Meenah walked out of the kitchen, dangling Karkat upside down, the end of his grub body in her hand and glanced at the blond male. Areana rushed after her, insisting to the high blood to put the poor grub down.

"I heard you were raising a grub but I didn't believe it. Maybe I can have some grub sau-"

"No!" Areana squealed uncharacteristically and managed to yank Karkat out of the sea dwellers clutches and cradled the red grub protectively. Everyone in the room (with the exception of the sleeping Roxy) looked at the blue bloods outburst, of which she was slowly flushing a faint blue blush on her cheeks. "We are not turning sweet little Karkat into grub sauce!"

"Wait, you guys eat baby trolls?" Dirk asked, keeping his cool as not to show his bewilderment at the new fact.

"I was joking!...well, sorta. We only make grub sauce out of the grubs that end up culled." Meenah pouted.

"Oh my god, that's terrible!" Jane gasped as her hands flung in front of her mouth.

"Pfft, its survival of the finnest, the strong will live, and the weak become a glubbing fintastic delicacy." Meenah grinned, flashing off her shark like teeth.

The room was silent as the humans were horrified at the sea dwellers statement until Dirk broke the silence.

"Okay…Jane, got any ideas on what I should be doing with this party?"

"There's not a whole lot they can do other than play with their toys. Umm, I could make some play dough and maybe blow bubbles but that's all I can think of." Jane mused to herself. It was different for John's birthday since they live in a house where there was a sandpit in the back yard

"I'm sure we'll come up with something, have a puppet show with the toys, give them piggy back rides, I'm sure they'll love it!" Jake suggested.

"Those seem like great ideas, I'm sure the wigg-er I mean children would love it." Aranea chimed, placing Karkat with the other infants.

John seemed to have a fixation towards Karkat, which lead the dark haired, chubby baby to crawl and follow wherever the crabby red grub would scuttle, which only aggravated the wiggler enough for him to sink his teeth into John's arm. After a few waterworks, patching up the bitten arm and apologies from Dirk, they began preparing the activities.

Jake started off with mixing dish detergent and water, and twisting a bit of wire for him to blow bubbles. The kids ate that up, especially John and Jade when they popped the colourful, floating spheres.

During that time, Jane had started and finished making some homemade edible play dough where the very first thing Dave did when he was handed the yellow dough was shove it in his mouth. Rose was especially talented at making shapes especially for someone who was a little over one year old, and Jake had to find a way distract Karkat as his tiny grub legs weren't capable of moulding and playing with the dough.

Roxy woke up about 10 minutes after the kids were distracted with their edible toy and ended up helping Jane and Meenah make snacks. Dave and Jade basically wolfed down whatever their little arms could reach while John was being fussy and only ate a couple slices of banana but pigged out when the cake came out.

The adults took this time to sit down, eat and chat. Aranea, who was nursing Karkat who was nibbling on small broken up pieces of cake, was giving Dirk a few tips on how to raise Karkat such as when he begins to grow out of his grub stage, there will probably be a lot of screaming and advised that sitting him in water or sopor slime will help relax the grub a bit and relieve the pain he'll be going through.

Their conversation was cut short when Meenah swiped Karkat from the cerulean bloods arms. Laughing manically, the fuchsia blood tossed the grub up, almost slamming the poor screaming wiggler into the ceiling. Aranea looked like she was going to have a fit and started scolding the other troll while trying to pry Karkat out of the dangerous sea dwellers hands.

After that ordeal, they returned to entertaining the babies. They began a puppet show using whatever toys they could find. It ended up as some poorly made fairy tale romance, Meenah voicing the prince with Dave's plush cat while Jake did the princess with one of Jade's squiddles. It kept the kids distracted even thought they had no idea what was really going on other than Karkat who was completely enthralled in their crappy romance story. It was going well until Meenah got bored and threw the cat into Jake's face, causing the kids to laugh.

It wasn't long after that the kids fell asleep; all of them bundled up in one large blanket, cuddled together. Jane and Roxy cleaned up whatever mess was left in the kitchen while the others were sprawled out on the couches, just chatting about things such as work, reminiscing about the 'good old days' and just life in general. It was a about 4:10pm when everyone began to pack up their belongings and pick up their sleeping tykes before heading out.

"Alright, thanks a lot for coming guys." Dirk said as he held the door open for his guests.

"Not a problem old chap, it was a lot of fun and Jade really seemed to enjoy herself!" Jake beamed as he readjusted the small sleeping girl in his arms.

"It was good to have the gang all together. We'll have to catch up again sometime." Jane said as she walked out the door, followed by Roxy and Meenah.

"You can count on that, Crocker." Dirk called out as he waved them goodbye.

Aranea was the last to leave as she took noticed of the unopened presents on the table.

"Ah, I knew we forgot something," Dirk muttered to himself, Aranea seemed to snap out of her trance like state and gave a sweet smile to the older Strider.

"I guess I should get going then. I've wigglersitted a lot so if you have any problems or need tips, just give me a call."

"Will do, see ya." Dirk waved as the cerulean blood exited and closed the door behind her.

With an audible sigh, he headed to the lounge room and crashed on the couch in exhaustion.

Oh yeah, he's gonna sleep like a rock tonight.

Dirk turned his head a little and couldn't help but smile at possibly the most precious thing he's ever seen.

Karkat was cuddled up do Dave, who was hugging the grub like a teddy. Both looked so peaceful and cute when they weren't arguing in their baby talk. Now that he thought about it, they haven't fought all day.

Maybe there was hope for them after all.

Sorry if this isn't as good as the others but considering what's happened...

On a brighter subject, I've finally gotten an Achiveofourown account! I've already posted this story on there, so it'll be great if you could support this story on there as well :)

Also, since I like interacting with my reviewers/readers/followers ect. and I've already done this with my other story - Who's your patron troll? what do you have in common with them?

Don't feel like your forced to answer, this is just for fun :)

Mine's Feferi~! I'm fairly similar to her personality wise since we're both usually happy and easily excited, though she act's like a princess (no shit) while I'm a total tomboy =P (Screw you, I'm a country bumpkin!), we also enjoy swimming :3

Anyways, hope you guys enjoy