CHAPTER 4
Another Friendly Note: I read your guys's comments, and take them into account. I dislike answering questions asked though. You're going to have to wait and be patient ;) But I WILL answer your questions IN the story. For example, what defines mutant blood, and the whole caste system (in My story at least), and *when* the other characters come in. Just be patient ;)
Oh! And if you have any suggestions or pleas or things you want in my story, just leave a comment! If I like it, I'll try to incorporate it!
Oh! And *asterisks* around words mean they are thoughts (Since italics aren't working on my computer as of this moment .
She clambered to her feet, following quickly behind him, swinging her dud leg wildly to keep up. "Coming with you? What do you mean?"
Gamzee laughed, reaching the house, and bending down to look at Bec. "It's simple. I'm not leaving you here. You're going to come with me! You'll love my group of friends! You can't stay here anyway. The High Bloods have found you. They'll come again with more, and stronger trolls. So you GOTTA come with me either way. But this way, I can prove my quadrant worthiness to you too!" He lifts Bec's head off the ground, and carefully opens its eyes. He tilts its head from side to side, frowning as he mumbles under his voice, "It seems Feferi will have a lot to do..." He carefully lifts Bec off the ground, and slings the lusus over his shoulders, wearing it like he would a scarf. He turns to Jade, who is still standing there, mouth agape. "Well? Come on! Get your stuff! The sooner we leave, the sooner we arrive!"
"But... I..." She stammered as Gamzee waltzed into her house, turning back and forth.
"You will need a few pairs of clothes, and weapons. And maybe we could eat before we go. Cuz I don't think I can carry both of you... so you're going to have to walk... Hey! Come on! Let's get a move on!" He turned back to Jade, who was still standing in the doorway, shocked.
She blinked a few times, and shook her head from side to side. "But... I don't... I'm happy here..."
Gamzee sighed, walking over to her. He placed his hands on her shoulders, looking into her eyes. "You can't stay here." For the first time, she truly looked into his eyes. They were still the bright yellow of a youngling, but they shone with some sort of wisdom she had never seen before. She felt as if he somehow knew things that she didn't. Things that made her need to trust him.
And she did.
She silently nodded her head, understanding now that he was not giving her another choice. Gamzee's serious face quickly dissolved, revealing the smile he normally wore. "Great!" He laughed a bit. "Go get your stuff!" She nodded, walking to the transportalizer. Right before she stepped on the portal, Gamzee called once again. "Hey!" She turned, eyebrows raised. He was frowning slightly. "I don't think I ever got your name..."
Jade couldn't help but giggle as she felt her anxiety slowly dissipate. For the first time that day, she was beginning to feel like her normal self again, able to smile, goof off, and laugh. She grinned wildly, and curtsied to Gamzee, bowing her head slightly. "You, sir Gamzee, can call me Jade Harley, if you please. I am part of the Cancer Caste, with the mutant blood color of Lime Green... Whatever a lime is... that's just what they call it... My lusus' name is Bec, and I am the Witch of Space. It's a pleasure to meet you!" She straightens from her bow, grinning happily now.
*Maybe this journey will be more fun than I'm giving it.* She thinks as Gamzee smiles back at her. She then steps onto the platform, and disappears.
She appears in her room, and happily skips to her closet. *Hmm~ what should I pack?* She stares at the clothes in her closet, and thinks for a while. *Not much, I suppose. I already have my 5 computers... Maybe just...*
She captchalogues her closet.
And then her artillery room.
And then her garden.
She smiles thankfully as her newest sylladex has finally proven worth the effort it took to get it. She had no idea why it was called "Dad's wallet," But it could pretty much carry anything she wanted (she even bet it could carry a bomb the size of a planet).
She comes back to the main room after visiting the kitchen. She offers some snacks to Gamzee, and they nibble a bit before they leave. As they munch, Gamzee stares at Jade's leg, frowning. After a while, he speaks his concerns. "I don't think we're going to get anywhere fast with this Lusus on my shoulders, and you with a broken ankle. We're going to need some way of transportation for you."
Jade nods in agreement, twiddling with a few of the strings around her fingers. She looks at the one she had placed on her pinky earlier, and, realizing it was no longer necessary, pulls it off. She twists it in her fingers for a few moments before letting it go, following it with her eyes as it fluttered to the ground, getting caught on the leg of the chair she sat on, hovering inches off the ground.
Hovering.
Hovering.
Her eyes grew wide as it clued in. She slammed her hands on the table as she jumped to her feet. She stumbles for a moment as her ankle complains, causing Gamzee to also jump out of his chair and quickly support her. She nodded her thanks quickly, but moved onto the true topic of her jumping immediately. "Hovering! That's how!"
Gamzee stared at her, dumbstruck. "Huh?"
Jade only smiled wider, pulling away from his firm grasp and hobbling over to the transportalizer. Gamzee followed behind. "Uhh... I just realized this, but you probably shouldn't be walking on that leg. Not a mother fucking good idea."
"Oh shush. I won't be for long." She stepped onto the transportalizer, and turned around, waiting for Gamzee. "I'm going to need your help a bit though. Get over here!" He steps onto the pad after her, and together, they zap off to the empty space where her artillery room used to be. She hobbles through the dark empty space toward a door in the distance, Gamzee trailing silently behind. When she reaches the door, she quickly opens it, and waltzes clumsily in. The lights automatically flick on, revealing her workshop.
If you could call it that.
It looked more like the scattered burial grounds of broken down Imperial Drones and failed attempts at new technology. Arms and legs were scattered everywhere, wires skewed over everything, Drone torso's lined up against the wall, gutted and rusting. White boards and chalk boards lay round, with numbers and formulas hastily jot down all over their surface. In one corner lay a very large pile of something, covered in a dark sheet. Gamzee couldn't stop his mouth from gaping open as she walked to the center of the scattered mess, beckoning for him to follow him. "This is my workshop! I take the drones that show up here, and, you know, try to kill me... Anyway, I take them, and try and make new stuff in here. I've already made a good 7 different weapons using just their arms! But I was thinking, if you give me maybe 10 minutes, I can try to make a hoverboard with some of their jet parts in their feet. We could put Bec or me on it, and that way everything would go much faster! All I have to do is-"
"What is that pile of stuff in the corner?" Gamzee cut in, interrupting her long train of thought with his impatient curiosity. Jade's face turns green as she blushes.
"Uhh... Sometimes... uhh... Don't worry about it." She stops talking, hobbling over to a pile of Drone feet, her ears bright green. "If I'm going to get this to work, we've got to start with a base. Let's take these feet, and one of the least rusty of the torsos..." Gamzee continued to stare at the pile of mystery in the corner. Jade frowned. "Hey! Gamzee! This way! Come on!" Gamzee snapped out of his drone, and followed her over to the pile of feet.
They began their work, Jade telling Gamzee what to do, and where to tie what wires to make the board functional. Gamzee lazily followed orders, taking random glanced here and there at the pile in the corner.
*what WAS it?*
THey set up a base of feet encasing the back half of the torso of a Drone, each foot wired with the other, and tied to the torso. Jade pointed to a pile of battery packs in the corner, and Gamzee retrieved two. He placed them on the torso, and followed Jade's careful instructions on how to hook them up with the feet's jet system. The makeshift hoverboard revved to life, now hovering quietly a few feet above the ground. Jade squealed, clapping her hands together.
"I'm not good at anything complicated, but I can put rudimentary stuff together to make something usable. This SHOULD do the trick." She smiled, patting it proudly. Gamzee stared at it for a moment, thinking.
Suddenly, an idea popped in his head. He smiled at his own genius. "Can I try it?"
Jade smiled, "Sure!"
Without further invitation, Gamzee hopped onto the hovercraft thing, and tilted it to the left a few inches. It moved left.
*eh. easy enough. I can totally do this and make it look like an accident...*
"Woah... WOAH!" He leaned forward, and the hoverboard shot in the exact direction as he planned, shooting him toward the mystery pile.
His plan: go flying toward the pile while screaming bloody murder. When he's close enough, he makes it seem like he regained control, twisting the board to use the Mystery Pile as a base of push off. The hovering technology, he believed, should easily push the sheet off the pile, solving the mystery.
What happened: Everything was going as planned until the "use the pile as a push off point." When he twisted the board, placing the base against the pile, the sheet fluttered away as he guessed it would. What he didn't account for, though, was the fact that the surface underneath the hovercraft was now moving. He lost control of the craft as it swung from side to side. After a few futile attempts to regain balance, he toppled off the board, and into the Mystery Pile.
Which, through Gamzee's plan, was no longer mysterious.
Jade flinched back, closing her eyes as Gamzee landed headfirst into the pile of filled buckets, sending them clattering across the room. She opened her eyes again to see Gamzee in the middle of a sea of buckets and liquid, each of his feet resting in a separate bucket, his tush also in its own receptacle. She flinched as a final bucket lodged itself, upside down, in between his horns, emptying its contents right on his head. He plastered his mouth shut as the liquid ran slowly down his face.
"OH MY GOSH!" Jade ran forward, tripping here and there on her broken ankle as she rushed toward him. "Are you alright?" She halted for a few moments in front of the pile of buckets before clambering over them to help Gamzee up. She took his hand and pulled him away from the pile. They toppled backwards, tumbling down the pile and landing at the bottom, Gamzee on top of jade.
Gamzee blinks for a few moments, shocked, staring down at Jade. She stares up at him with a mirrored expression. The liquid in his hair lightly runs down his face, and ends up falling on Jade's face. She blinks when it touches her light grey skin. The bucket dislodged itself from in-between Gamzee's horns, clattering to the ground right above Jade's head. They still lay there in complete silence.
And then Gamzee burst into laughter, rolling away from Jade, holding his stomach as he gasped for breath.
Jade, on the other hand, still staring at the ceiling, lightly lifts her hand to her face, wiping the small drop of liquid away. Her eyes wide, she blushed madly, mind reeling.
*He was... 5 inches away...* she inhaled deeply, her lungs unable to keep up with her mind. *He smelled like... Faygo... NO! Jade! Snap out of it! You've known him for at most 3 hours! Stop this idiotic redrom mindfuckery right now!* With that quick pep talk, she shooed away any lingering thoughts, and hoisted herself up.
"Shouldn't we clean you up and get going? It's going to get unbearably light in a matter of hours."
Gamzee sat up, caught his breath, and nodded. "You're right. We should."
"Good. There's a shower in the room to the left. I'm sure you've got a spare pair of clothes captchalogued, am I correct?"
"yeah."
"Kay good. I'll strap Bec to this thing while you shower. It should only take a little while, so hurry up."
"Kay!" He walks off to the next room as Jade snags the hovercraft from the corner of the room where it had safely landed after the... Jade sighed, walking to the Transportalizer, and returning to the main room, taking the craft with her. She reaches the front room, and takes to the task of lifting Bec off the ground, and onto the hovercraft.
It proved more difficult than she expected, especially with her broken ankle. She tugs and pulls, but is unable to get Bec any more than 3 inches to the left or right. After a while, she collapses, resting her back against Bec's large side.
*How did Gamzee lift Bec so easily? It's so heavy!*
She leaned into Bec, inhaling the familiar scent. She smiled, appreciating her luck as a young troll to get such a loyal lusus. Her smile faded away as Bec whined weakly, her appreciation turning into worry. She reached up and stroked Bec's head.
"You'll be okay, Bec. Don't worry. I won't let you die. Don't worry." She wiped away a small green tear.
"Yup! No mother fucking worries! We've got this shit in the bag!" Gamzee appeared in the room, wearing fresh clothes, his hair dripping wet. Jade looked up at him, and he smiled at her. "Unable to get him off the ground, eh? You really are only good at one thing." He walked over to Bec, squatting near its head.
"Hmmmm... Well!" He stands up, and then quickly wraps his arms around Bec's body, hefting it off the ground. Jade tumbles to the side as her backrest is removed. Gamzee looks down for a second,
"Oh. Oops. Sorry..." He lightly places Bec on the hovercraft, and it sags slightly under the Lusus' weight. He then turns to Jade.
"Can I have some of your string?" He holds his hand out expectantly. She reaches into her pocket, and hands him some light blue string. He takes it, and quickly creates a leash connecting himself to the hovercraft. Proud of his handiwork, he reaches down, and picks Jade up carefully, bridal style.
"Is that better than potato sack style?" He asks, looking down at her.
She refused to blush, but nods quietly. Gamzee smiles, and takes off out the door and toward the forest. He, once again, easily ducks and dodges trees and hops over obstacles. They flew speedily through the forest. Jade lost her bearings as the trees flew past her in every direction, and she knew that if she changed her mind, she would not be able to return home anyway. She gave up, closed her eyes, and rested her head on Gamzee's shoulder.
Gamzee, who had been easily loping through the forest up to this point, stumbles ever so slightly as she rests her head on his shoulder. He blinks, and risks a quick glance down at her. Her hair flies back at the speed they are going, and her eyelashes flutter slightly in the wind. Her lips are a light grey, but shine slightly. She licks her lips slightly, and shifts in his arms, and his heart flutters for a second.
*What the motherfuck was that?* He questions his heart as he continues his lope, disconcerted. The only time he remembers his heart doing that was when he was with...
His horns slammed into a tree, and he almost toppled over. He swung his feet under him, and quickly saved his footing, attempting not to jostle Jade, who had obviously fallen asleep.
*it should be near here...*
He slowly comes to a halt, looking around. He smiles lightly, finding what he was looking for. He walks over to a veil of vines, and pushes them aside, revealing a small clearing. He walks in, speaking as he enters.
"I'm back. Brought a new mother fucking toy! Come see this shit!"