He was close.

He could feel it in his bones. Dave smirked, adjusting the shades that hid his eyes. He had been following a certain troll for months now, and had finally caught her trail. It had been hard to do, she was very careful, but nobody could outsmart Dave.

He was standing at the base of a cliff, the dark musky woods surrounding him. The last rays of light were fading, signaling the crickets to begin their song. The dense cool air swirled at his feet, the breeze washing down the forest cliff. He began to make his ascent, paying careful mind to the ground now that the sun had fallen. There was no trail, but he had watched Terezi go up and knew the general direction of where she went.

He had dueled Terezi many times during his hunt, each time learning valuable pieces of information. She was a tricky challenge, and he seemed to enjoy fighting her. While his skills were equal to hers, if not better, she had always managed to slip away before he could end the battle. Finally he had caught up to where she was hiding, and he would hopefully find out what she was concealing.

At the beginning of the mission he had been assigned to the take down team, along with Dirk and Jake. Soon after he had his first fight with Terezi, and he knew something was… off. She kept leaving vague clues, as if wanting to pull him into her mysterious secret. After that he broke off from the team to focus solely on finding out what Terezi was hiding. He knew it had to be something big, it was one of those gut feelings. The same feeling that was telling him he was so close to revealing the secret he had spent months trying to uncover.

He reached a leveled clearing on the cliff that was void of trees, and upon squinting his eyes through the darkness, he saw a black mouth of a cave, tall enough to easily accommodate a person and the black abyss implied depth. That would be the perfect place to hide.

Dave unsheathed his long sword, and inched around the clearing towards the mouth of the cave, eyes sweeping around him for any sign of the troll.

"Well well well. Haven't you gotten a little too close?" Dave looked up to see Terezi casually standing on a small ledge above the cave opening, leaning her chin on her cane while smirking down at Dave. Even in the dim light, Dave could make out her features perfectly. She wore a black spandex suit that hugged her womanly curves, a teal belt draped loosely around her waist, the buckle in the shape of her sign, outlined in red. A scarlet cape draped softly around her shoulders, flowing gracefully in the breeze. Her hood was down, revealing her sharp orange horns sprouting out of inky black hair. Pointed red glasses hid her eyes, but her toothy grin revealed her mischievous child like personality. Dave glanced to her cane adorned with a red dragon skull as she slid it apart, revealing two swords.

"Well my knight, shall we dance?" She cackled sharply before jumping gracefully down to meet her opponent.

XXXXX

How can this be happening?!

Jade was panicked as she typed, loading up various security programs and locking down the facility through the main computer. What had alarmed the system was a breach in security, which was close to impossible on the secluded island. After Jade had gone through protocol by shutting branches of the facility down, she loaded up another program. She scanned through the information. There had been no ships within 100 kilometers of the island for the past three days! How could someone have possibly snuck in? On her monitors it showed one life form on the east branch of the facility. She loaded the security footage from the hall it was currently in and the camera was clearly dysfunctioning, a static black the only view it gave.

Jade thought about the next course of action. The facility was a huge base that was connected underground through passageways, one of which the intruder had made its way in. All of the doors leading to the main facility, where she was now, were securely closed and locked. As long as she stayed in the main facility, there was no way the intruder could get in.

Just to be safe Jade started encrypting the top secret information on the computer. It was already encrypted before, but this would add extra caution. Before she could get through most of it, the table and monitors started to shake, the floor rumbling as it jumbled the equipment. A monitor fell and broke on the white concrete floor, its glass screen shattering leaving an array of shards on the floor.

What the hell was that?!

Before Jade could right herself a larger boom sounded, and this time both cabinets and monitors fell over from the vibrations. Immediately after Jade rushed to a heavy steeled cabinet, ripping open the doors before quickly grabbing a shotgun, loading it quickly. Just in time a huge boom sounded behind her and smoke filled the air. Only one of the two dozen monitors remained unscathed and the room was in a flurry of glass shards and falling paper. Jade coughed as she squinted through the smoke, aiming her shotgun diligently.

Through smoke a figure emerged, cape flowing arrogantly behind them, a large rifle resting in his hand. Before the intruder had time to make another move Jade shot, and the intruders hand flew to his shoulder.

"Fuck! What did you do that for? Do you know who I am?!" The intruder had a wavy accent, his sea swept hair bobbing up and down in pain. He rested down on his knees, and Jade quickly made her way over the broken glass, all the while keeping her eye trained on him.

"I aimed for your shoulder. The next one goes straight through your heart. What is your purpose here?" Jade stood menacingly over the clutching intruder, his hand covering up a deep purple wound. As he snarled Jade got a closer look at him. He was huddled on the ground, yet his face showed a mixture of fury and pain. He was obviously a troll, his silky gray skin and angle horns betrayed that fact. His ears were unusual however; the skin where his ears would be was branched off into fins, half the size of his head. She recognized him from the debriefing. His name was... Eridan? Yes, she remembered him now. He had on a black wet suit with purple pin stripes running down the sides, and a gold utility belt hugged his hips. A quite useless purple cape flowed around him, and as he was clutching his shoulder she could see his hands were adorned in dozens of golden rings. She was more interested in his other hand, which was still clutching the rifle that had presuming shot through the thick metal walls.

"Put the rifle down" She demanded in a strong voice, her aim still positioned on his heart. He snarled at her, but nevertheless put his rifle down slowly.

"Can you put down that unsightly weapon now? I am not going to harm you. Even if I wanted to, a pathetic human like yourself is not even worth my time." He said this all with a huff, his gaze moving elsewhere in annoyance. Jade raised her eyebrow.

"Are you saying a pathetic human like myself brought you down?" Eridan rolled his eyes and carefully stood up, Jade tensing as he did so. His hand slipped from his injured arm as he gave her a look of amusement, smirking as he did so.

"Whoever said you brought me down?" Before Jade could react, Eridan swiftly reached down to his belt and pulled out a white wand, swishing it across the air, Jades rifle flying out of her hands. She reached down to grab the handgun strapped to her ankle, but Eridan was too quick. A blinding light surrounded her, and she clutched her head, a piercing headache resounding through her skull. As she faded into unconsciousness, her last sight was of Eridan standing over her with a smug grin on his face.

XXXXX

"Get the fuck away from me!" Karkat snarled at the cheerful human. John just laughed.

"Come on Karkat, this will be fun!" John had brought in a board game for them to play, to supposedly 'pass the time'. This particular board had an elderly man on the cover with a top hat and a monocle. Seemed far from something worthwhile.

"It even says on the back, 'hours of fun for all!'" The troll gave John an incredulous look.

"Hours?! I did not fucking sign up for this" John pouted, giving Karkat his best puppy dog expression.

"Please Karkat? It's not like you have anything else to do" Karkat gave the boy a blank stare, then sighed, giving in.

"Fine" As John was setting up the board Karkat could still not see the connection between the cheerfully humming human to the same one that had threatened him when he first arrived. John was a warrior, an agent, a protector of earth. Yet he was so kind, gentle, and held no high regard for killing. While it still confused the troll, he was getting more used to the idea, and had even begun to appreciate it.

"Karkat?" Said troll looked up, realizing that he had been dazing off. His face tinted red at his mistake. Wait, why was it doing that? He pushed his thoughts away and roughly shoved John, grabbing a game piece.

"How does this fucking game work?" He asked bitterly, and John smiled widely while beginning to explain the rules.

As they played the game many curses were said, laughter had, and childish banter ensued. Once two hours had passed John looked down at his watch and stood up surprised.

"Oh geez, it's later than I thought. I've got to go report in to Rose. Can you pick up the game please?" Karkat had an unusual feeling of disappointment, but nevertheless snarled at John.

"Fine. I'll pick up your fucking useless game for you" Even with Krakats rude attitude John chuckled.

"Thanks Karkat! I'll see you later" As he turned to walk to the door, Karkat felt an odd pressure on his chest.

"Wait John" Said human turned around, eyebrow raised in question.

"Yes?" Karkat froze.

"Uh..." What was he going to say? He didn't even know why he had stopped John, it just slipped from his mouth. John continued to stare at him, waiting for an answer. Karkat burned red, then snapped to his usual defense mechanism.

"What are you fucking staring at me for? Didn't you have somewhere to be? Or did your think pan finally give up on your pathetic life?" John looked taken aback.

"But you asked me to wait?"

Karkat growled.

"Well I changed my mind. Is that a process you can't fucking understand?" John rolled his eyes, annoyed at Karkats usual behavior.

"Whatever Karkat. I'll see you later" John left the room, the door hissing behind him as it closed. Karkat grumbled as he began to pick up the pieces from the game. Why did he even say anything? Why did he stop him? Why was he... blushing?

As much as he hated to realize it, he knew that answer. John was kind, goofy, strong, and just fucking adorable. He... He was flushed for him, as much as he hated that realization. However, he knew he couldn't change his feelings. The universe had brought them together, and nothing could change that fact.

But a fucking human?

Karkat grumbled audibly as he walked over to his computer, hoping to distract his thoughts for a while. He opened up trollian, surprised to see that someone had contacted him within the past hour. Usually the trolls tried to avoid talking to him by all means necessary. However, this particular one just left a message.

twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG]

TA: iit2 almo2t ready. get prepared.

twinArmageddons [TA] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG]

A/N I am so sorry this took so long! I've been super busy with college applications and such, but I think I've gotten through most of that, so updates should be more frequent now. Thank you to everyone who reviewed! And everyone who has favorited this story! You guys are awesome! Please review over anything you like, whether it be comments, questions, or just speculations on what's to come! :P Thanks!