This will probably be less coherent than usual, because I kind of rushed writing it... Homework piles up when you're not doing it...
Anyways, call out to KatariReviews/SeductiveStriders! Thank you so much for your awesome review! I love and appreciate all of your reviews readers, but I especially like ones with questions or criticisms or long ones, and KatariReveiws had all three!
Because I can't directly respond to you, I'll just put my response here, if you don't mind: Thanks! Thanks! Thanks! I would continue, but I don't want this to be too long. Although, I should mention that the only reason I have managed to grasp Homestuck so thouroghly is because I obsessively read and re-read Homestuck twice (I'm currently halfway through the third time, actually), not because of any real literary analytic talents. As for your suggestion about the trolls' horns, that is a brilliant idea. I probably would've thought something along the lines of 'Each of the trolls have individualized horns, so I should do that for the humans' which is why Rose has needle-horns and Dave has the scratch horns and John... Actually, I ran out ideas there. But still, I would've thought that since the trolls have unique horns, so should the humans... but then I would realize that the trolls' horns are based off their ancestors' horns, and they're patron trolls in a way too... But then again, the idea never struck me in the first place, so none of that thinking process even began. I think I might do that. Eventually. As for the comments on grammar, yeah, I'm wincing just looking at these. I'll get around to fixing them. But this really has gone on to long and I might be boring the other readers, so goodbye! Thanks again!
Jane paced back and forth. It was the next day, and she'd woken up especially early as to ensure that she would have plenty of time to think. She wasn't sure if she wanted to go to school the next day; it'll either be excruciatingly painful, or a welcoming distraction. Either way, for sure she would have to say hi to John, who cheerfully said 'hello' to her every day as though he did all his life.
Fuck John and his stupid inability to cope.
All that aside, she wanted... Shit. She didn't know what she wanted.
She paced faster. What should she do? What should she do?
She heard a soft knock on her door.
Sighing, she then got ready for school.
...
Karkat wanted nothing to do with the fucking lusus-dad thing. Unfortunately, he offered dinner. If there was one thing that could convince Karkat right now, it would be to offer him food. But even still, he almost declined just because he was sick to fucking death of Egbert.
But Terezi elbowed him in the ribs with enough force that he couldn't get enough air to answer.
"We would love to eat your dinner."
"Fuck... You..." Was all Karkat managed to wheeze out, but no one heard.
Karkat and Terezi ate like ravenous animals. Terezi kept asking for, and Karkat grumpily accepted anything offered to him. Truthfully, Karkat thought it all tasted like crap and it all had a weird texture. Except for the mashed potatoes Those were perfect. Peeeeerrfect.
Dad was going to ask more questions during dinner, but seeing how those two were eating, he felt as though he should limit everything to small talk. He only got answers from John though; Karmap wouldn't answer him at all, and the other girl Tereki would only laugh in a mischievous way.
When the food stopped coming, Karkat sighed and set down his fork (or was it a knife? Some human utensil that Rose told him about).
Dad noted this and leaned forward, preparing for the interrogation. He opened his mouth, but by then Terezi was already unconscious and Karkat's lids were drooping to the point of no return.
He sighed and put the two of them in the guest room.
When he sat down, he turned instead to John who was squirming slightly in his seat.
"So, who are those two, really. I know you lied before when you said that they were helping you in the 'school play'."
John sighed. He knew this was coming. "Rose told you; they were victims of that gang. They were sent to recruit us."
Dad raised an eyebrow. "How did you know them beforehand?"
"Uh, new recruits are supposed to get to know the, uh messengers. Before. The recruiting thing." Not his most coherent sentence.
Dad could believe this. They fit the part of gang members, those two kids. The whole situation was fishy enough to fit. And yet...
"What was with the weird makeup?"
"It was a... Ritual. For recruitment." Oh, my, god, John could not believe he just said that.
"And what's with those pajamas?"
John looked down in surprise. He'd almost forgotten about them. "Oh, um, I don't know."
Dad nodded. John sounded sincere, but something sounded like he was withholding information. And if John wouldn't tell him something, that usually meant that no matter what he did he wouldn't find out.
Dad knows because he's tried before.
...
Karkat woke up face to face with Terezi. This wasn't unusual; they slept like this all the time. What was unusual was that she was a human.
He remembered everything.
"Fuck!" He yelled, sitting up.
"Helluva way to wake up." Terezi mumbled turning on her side.
"We're humans! In a human house!"
"In John's."
"In John's house!"
"That sums it up. Can you close the window? The sun is right in my face."
Karkat blinked and slid out of bed, still sleepy despite the jolted wakening.
Terezi mumbled something akin to a thank you and promptly fell back asleep.
Karkat almost considered going back to sleep, but then there was a knock on the door.
"Karkat, the door-"
"I know! I heard it too, Terezi!"
He opened the door.
"John just left for school," Dad said, "And I have some questions for you."
...
Much to Jane's delight, John didn't say hello to her that day. He walked right past her, straight-faced and serious.
...
Sollux could not, could not fucking believe that this was happening. He'd almost adjusted to life as it was, but now they were humans in a humanic house. Humanic? Humanish? Whatever. Point is, it's human. Not Troll.
He wasn't quite sure, but he thought that it was Rose's. That was okay, Rose was already a pretty cool person. He didn't mind Kanaya either, although he wasn't entirely sure if it was her. Aradia guided him to a seat of some sort to sit on, and then vanished.
So Sollux sat alone, pathetic and blind on this chair as a human in a human house. Stupid goddamn lousy Blind Prophet of Doom shit.
He leaned back and closed his eyes, though it made no difference whether they were open or not. He just did it to remember the feeling of relief it used to give him.
He heard some commotion in the corner of the room. Whoever they were (hintKanayaRosehint) they didn't know that Sollux was there, and it sounded like they were saying some pretty intimate things. Fuck.
He tuned it out, and to his relief they eventually stopped. But then he realized by the softer noises they made that they had stopped talking to do some making out. Motherfuck.
Sollux continued tuning them out.
...
Jake didn't know what to do. He'd sat in the corner of the room, unnoticed as Rose tried to make up an excuse and guardians stood angrily in front of the door, blocking all escapes until everyone left. He filed out silently behind them, and no one noticed him.
He stopped once outside and watched them walk away. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to do. He wanted to know what to do.
He considered for a moment chasing down Roxy and Dirk, but he thought that they probably wouldn't want to see him, as he had been kind of a douche to them.
He thought maybe of staying with Mr. Egbert or the Lalondes, but he didn't know them well enough. Jane was absolutely out of the question. He'd harassed her enough for a lifetime.
Not knowing what to do, he wandered drunkenly off.
...
The girl with short white hair that curled in waves and a green suite ran up to grab Roxy by the shoulder.
"Roxy!" She exclaimed in a British accent.
Roxy turned, then blinked as though she didn't believe what she was seeing.
"Calliope?"
And on that note we end the chapter
PSYCHE!
I know, it would've been a great place to end the chapter, but I don't want to cheat you out of your next thousand or so words.
"Calliope?"
"Yes, it's me! And Dirk! And... Bro?" She asked, looking at the older Strider. She shrugged and turned back to face everyone. "Well anyways, hello! I have so much to talk to you about!"
Roxy hugged her, and then pulled Dirk into the hug because, well, he should be.
Bro stood awkwardly watching with Dave, neither of which knew the girl very well (the former not knowing her at all). He leaned over to Dave and asked, "And she is?"
"Oh, Uh, she's Roxy's friend. And Dirk's. She's both of their friends." Dave said intelligently.
Bro didn't respond, he merely dipped his head in the most minute of motions that could either mean approval, disapproval, understanding, or possibly just acknowledgement of some inscrutable reasoning he didn't feel like sharing.
Dave bit his lip.
Shit. He knows.
...
When John came home from school, he was greeted by a blissfully quiet house.
Karkat and Terezi were still asleep. They both were more accustomed to being awake during the night than the day, and on top of that they were bone deep exhausted from... Well, everything. To be more specific, the past four months.
Dad was still at work. Whatever work that was.
John smiled at his solitude and plopped down on the couch. He reached for the remote to turn on the TV, but the remote was across the room on top of the TV. Naturally.
He sighed, and the sigh swooped around the room and nudged the remote every so slightly.
He jumped, slightly startled. Oh yeah, I have wind powers, he thought.
He smiled.
Reaching his hand out, he concentrated and felt the wind held always at bay by his willpower alone stretch and flex like some giant, unanimous muscle.
The remote flew over to him.
Much to excited for TV now, he turned to the lamp on the coffee table beside the couch. Slowly at first, then faster, he made the shade spin in circles. He then expanded this phenomena to the other lamps so that they were all swirling and spinning around. Laughing, he made everything in the room fly, the couch, the trinkets scattered around the room, all the forgotten bits of food and clothing unearthed and sent soaring.
However, the lampshades stopped spinning when he made them fly. When he tried again, he forgot to keep them floating, and they plummeted.
"Waaaaoooh!" He yelled, swooping and grabbing them.
Apparently to keep them spinning, it took the same kind of multitasking talent as the rub-your-belly-pat-your-head thinking (something John'd never been able to do).
But even despite this, he still laughed, flying in the middle of a floating living room clutching three lamps.
The door swung open. "John, you wouldn't answer the door! Jesus, are you-" The boy that walked in froze, his eyes as wide as saucers as he took in the scene before him. "Deaf?" He squeaked out.
"Aah!" John let out a little yelp and let everything back down as fast as he could. "L-L-Lyon, what are you doing he-here?" John stuttered.
"You... Lamp... Fly... Blue?"
"Um, Er, um..." Really, John ought to have been awarded for that outstanding comment of genius and coherency.
"You can fly?"
"Um, well, kinda, well, there's a, Uh, reason-"
A smile broke out on the boy's face. "That's so cool! Wow! Why didn't you tell me before? I mean we've been friends for seven years and I've never known you could /fly/."
"Seven years? Oh, right." Sonetimes John forgot that people think he'd lived their all his life rather than just a few months. "Well, um, I didn't want to, you know..."
"You can make other things fly too! That's so cool! Can you make me fly?"
"Uh, well yeah, um, but-"
"Are you like a superhero or something? Do you fight crime?"
"He's a motherfucking god. He doesn't 'fight crime'. That's a stupid human idea that mutants fight the 'bad guy's which was always a retarded idea. I mean, what about if a 'bad guy' just seemed bad, but had honest intentions or something? Humans are so fucking linear, it's pathetic."
John and Lyon whirled around.
"Karkat! You're awake!" John choked out.
Karkat yawned and ran his fingers through his hair. "Not for long. I only got up because the commotion woke us up, you inconsiderate fucktards."
"Why... Who are you?"
"And who the fuck are you?"
"Karkat, be nice. This is my friend Lyon." John tried to give hi. A look that said don't-say-anything-else-weird-or-suspicious-soundi ng, but he wasn't sure if Karkat caught it.
"What did you mean, John is a god?"
"God tier, did he never tell you?"
"Um, no?" The boy looked at John questioningly, but John was still desperately still trying to convey his message to Karkat.
"Sounds like that'll be quite the story! Why don't you two go grab a grubloaf and a blanket and get cozy up somewhere to discuss it and leave Terezi the fuck alone? You know everytime she wakes up, the first thing she does is smack me in the face and growl at me to be quiet?"
"I, Uh, Terezi?"
"The other troll-turned-human."
"You- I, um, Troll?"
"The name of my fucking species."
"I..." He looked hopelessly at John, who looked searingly at Karkat.
"Karkat!"
"What?"
"Why did you tell him all that?"
"Why shouldn't he fucking know? He's your 'friend', right?"
"No! Karkat! No one is supposed to know!"
"And why the fuck not?"
John stopped. He didn't have a response to that. Why not? He'd never told anyone because... Because...
"Tell me what?" Lyon demanded. His smile was gone. Unusually serious, he looked at John with worry. "What haven't you told me?"
John inhaled deeply.
He closed his eyes, and imps with their oily trails ran across his vision, clowns and monsters and salamanders and flying and Jack and hammers and blood stained swords, blood that ran from his dad and from himself and from Rose, blood from Jade and dead Daves everywhere, and a clouded vision from the center of Skaia on a planet made to be a battlefield, created for death and warfare that was to grow another universe but couldn't, was stopped up with a cancerous growth...
He let the breath go, and the room seemed to come alive with his breath, the breath he was the Heir to. The Heir of Breath.
"This is gonna be a long story."
"I'll get the mucus for the grubloaf." Karkat muttered and stumbled to the bedroom.
Karkat needs to learn some tact.
Anyways, in case some of you were wondering how both John and Dave got to Rose's school by driving even though they're all in different states, the answer is shut up. Shut up is why.
But seriously, please please please tell me if you notice any giant, gaping plot holes like that. For now (until I feel like fixing it properly), I will file any weirdness under the category of 'its an alternate universe there are some differences', just like how humans look different in this universe (remember that?) and how in the Alpha station's universe there were herds of Tinkerbulls on Jake's island. I've always wondered about that.
I was hoping for the Calliope encounter to go a bit longer and more smoothly, but oh well. Wait for the next chapter, I guess.
One last word before I go: CHAPTERS WILL NOT, NOR WILL EVER (probably) COME OUT REGULARLY IN A REGULAR FASHION. IN FACT, ALL THESE RAPID FIRE UPDATES WILL DISAPPEAR ENTIRELY AND BE REPLACED BY SLOW FIRE UPDATES. I've been neglecting too much stuff in favor of this story. Trust me, if I could, I would just sit around all day writing obscene amounts of chapters in even more obscene amounts of time. But I can't, school beckons. As well as food and water, although less in a much less hostile manner. *Deep sigh...*
