Two sisters stand on the precipice of fate and destiny. One seeks combat. To pursue and destroy an enemy she has no hope of matching. The other knows she must stop the first, lest they and their friends be found and die at the hands of a monster.
These two sisters of spirit are of a race called Trolls. Human-like on the outside save for grey skin and a pair of orange horns. They are also both players of a game. A game of cosmic aspects and the continuation of reality.
The rash sister, Vriska, turns away to leave. Sure that no blow will come to stop her. A pair of blue butterfly wings unfurl from her back; a gift of game's that she managed to obtain through sheer sociopathy. She rises from the ground, glitter in her wake. A trail that will lead the villainous Jack Noir to their hiding place when she confronts him.
The other sister, Terezi, knows what must be done. With her powers as a Seer, she has seen what will happen if she hesitates. Vriska will die anyways, but the rest along with her. Resolved, she leaps sword in hand to deliver the fatal blow and prevent calamity.
Terezi's target was the heart. But be it from unsteady nerves or the simple shifting of the winds, she misses. Striking the base of the spine instead. Were any to recount events in later years, the how would be regaled as unimportant. The missed blow just being categorized as one of life's Happy Little Accidents.
The Green Sun, The Meteor – 1 and ½ hours post-accident.
As Vriska came to, she could hear voices talking. She also felt a lot of pain, but that didn't bother her too much. She'd felt worse when her arm and eye had gotten blown off (she'd gotten better). There was something else wrong but she couldn't pin down what it was, she was too dazed.
She tried to open her eyes and sit up, but the pain was too much, so she snapped her eyes back shut and grunted without really accomplishing anything. The murmuring suddenly ceased and an unfamiliar voice spoke. "She's up." As she again struggled to sit up she felt someone put their hand on her back to support her. The same unfamiliar voice spoke to her softly "Easy there champ, you've been through a lot."
She managed to crack her eyes open and take in the scene before her. Looking over she saw that the unfamiliar voice belonged to a Human wearing a pair of dark glasses, Dave Strider, whom she recognized but had never talked to directly. Standing a few paces away was the Human Rose Lalonde and one of Vriska's fellow Trolls, Kanaya. Further off was Terezi, who seemed unable to look Vriska in the eyes, albeit metaphorically, as Terezi was blind.
Vriska was confused, the Humans and Trolls were supposed to be in different sessions of the game, how did they-? It was then she took notice of the massive Green Sun that blotted out the sky above the Troll's meteor laboratory. So that was it, they'd left their session and completed the rendezvous. But hadn't she been about to fight Jack? Her thoughts crystalized and she remembered; the confrontation with Terezi, turning away, the pain. She looked down and saw bandages wrapped around her midsection, her orange God-Tier jumpsuit stained blue with her blood.
In shock she tried to scramble to her feet, but found that she couldn't. Dave stopped her from face-planting onto the ground and it was then she realized what was off; she couldn't feel her legs. Her breathing caught, while Rose and Kanaya exchanged concerned and knowing glances.
Vriska brushed off Dave and shuttered. She couldn't be this weak, not again. Kanaya stepped forwards, her long skirts swirling. "We were afraid this might be the case, we did what we could to stop the bleeding, but the-" Her eyes flickered over to Terezi. "-injury you received was too traumatic."
Moving right through the stages of grief, Vriska started at denial. "This is suppose to be impossible! I'm a God-Tier, I'm immortal!" She kept trying in vain to make her legs move until Rose spoke up. "We know that the immortality granted by God-Tier is conditional, not applying to cases where the death would be Heroic or Just. It would appear that this extends to injuries as well."
Vriska snarled, switching to anger. "And what? This is supposed to be heroic?!" She said, motioning to her legs. The others remained quiet. This was… not the time to bring up the other possibility. Vriska thought through her options before speaking up again, trying to find some way to work the system, some way to make this all go away. "Where's Feferi? She's a Life player right? Have her heal me."
Kanaya folded her hands in front of her, a look of resignation on her face as she delivered the bad news. "Vriska, Feferi is dead. Eridan killed her before your fight with him." Vriska reeled at this, her mind racing, she'd heard Terezi say she was dead in an accusation that she'd done it, but with everything else that had followed she'd forgotten. Panic building, she tried again. "Then Equius, he. He can make me a pair of cybernetic legs, like he did for Tavros." But the pained expression on Kanaya's face brought the full list of the recently dead to the front of Vriska's mind. Telling her that that option was closed forever as well.
Vriska felt like she couldn't breath. She was done for. There was no recovering from this kind of loss of mobility, not for her. She was weak now. Weak and helpless and pathetic and she didn't know whether to scream in frustration or cry. Her thoughts of anguish were momentarily interrupted by the noise of squeaking wheels and a loud voice calling out. "HEY I FOUND IT."
She twisted around to see Karkat, one of the few Trolls lucky enough to be alive. He had short nubby horns and a near permanent frown, and was pushing a familiar four-wheeled device. A wheelchair. Vriska's voice felt hoarse as she asked the question she already knew the answer to. "Is that Tavros's?" Vengeance and justice could be such cruel things no matter how unintentional.
Karkat put on a fake look of confusion as he looked from Vriska to the wheelchair then back again. Sarcasm dripped from his voice. "What? No. This belonged to the other guy you crippled and then killed. YES IT'S TAVROS'S!"
At that outburst Dave peeled off of the group and steered Karkat away from the others. Snippets of their conversation could be heard. "Dude… calm down…" and "..deserves it.." Vriska collapsed further, her tirade having sapped what little strength she had left. Seeing her state, Rose and Kanaya walked over to her, hooked their arms under hers and carried her to the chair. She was too tired to protest. As she was placed in the four-wheeled mockery, her shame and fear building, she barely noticed Rose look around and ask. "What happened to the other bodies?"
The Long Yard, Jade's Battleship – 1 and ¾ hours post-accident.
For John, it had been a very long two days. In that time he'd been whisked away from Earth, died, been brought back to life (twice if some people were to be believed), seen his father murdered, and barely escaped the grasp of a murderous insect-dog man. It would seem the only consolation from these events where the comfortable God-Tier pajamas he now wore, the aliens he met on an online chat client, and the now real-world company of one of his online friends who had turned out to be his sister. It was a lot for a 13-year-old to take in.
He and his newfound sister were now on a commandeered alien battleship flying though what looked like a green-tinted starfield screensaver. He looked over to Jade, Her God-Tier outfit consisting of a black skirt and double-hooded hoodie as opposed to his blue pajama-pants with its one long hoodie. She looked different from how he'd imagined her, but it was probably just the second pair of dog ears that was throwing him off.
He motioned to the space around them "so that's it then, we did it? We reset the session?"
She responded. "Yes!"
"And we're heading to the reset session now?"
"Yep…"
John looked into the distance towards where the battleship was going. Barely visible was a large window, presumably similar to the one they'd flown the ship through to escape their resetting game session. It didn't seem to be getting any closer. "Sooo… how long till we get there?"
Jade responded with a smile, the smile of a person who really didn't want to say what they were about to say but had to say it anyway. "Ohhh… aboutthreeyears?" She folded her hands behind her back and then pretended to see something REALLY interesting in the whirling star patterns above. Disregarding John's shocked expression.
John was aghast. "Three YEARS?! That's like, more than a thousand days."
"A thousand and ninety-five if we're being precise."
John tried to remember all the things he'd learned in the past 48 hours. "You can't get us there any faster with your space-powers? Like, teleport us there?"
Jade shook her head, the rules were still new to her too, but she thought she had a good understanding of her limitations. "No, I've already used my power to accelerate us to as close to the speed of light as I dare; and the teleportation powers I inherited from Bec," she motioned to her dog ears, "Aren't going to work here. We're like, doubly outside of reality at this point."
"Oh." John said. It wasn't that he didn't want to spend quality time with his long-lost sister or relax after all the harrowing events that he's been through, but he'd been looking forwards to meeting Dave, Rose, and the Trolls in person. Now it looked like that was going to be more time in the making.
"Hey, what's all the hubbub?" A third voice asked. John looked over to see what looked like an ghostly orange teenager floating over to where they were on the deck. The "ghost" wore a pair of shades, had wings, and had a sword impaled in his torso seemingly without any consequence. From what John had hear this must be Dave-Sprite, Dave's bird-clone, or something. Long day.
Jade waved at the new arrival. "Hi! We were just going over our itinerary."
Dave-Sprite looked over to John, who was still crestfallen. "What's with him?"
John looked up, trying to brush off his melancholy mood. "Oh, I just was looking forwards to meeting all the others. I mean you two are great company, but I just wish I knew if they were ok."
Jade perked up. "Oh, then you're in luck. They're all at the Green Sun now. And since the powers I got from Bec connect me to the Green Sun-" Her body became translucent, and suddenly John and Dave-Sprite could through her like a window. The image they saw was a bunch of humans and aliens standing around talking while bathed in green light.
"Looks alright to me." Said Dave-Sprite
"Can we go there?" Asked John.
Jade made herself solid again as she answered. "Yes, but with a few caveats. It would be a one-way trip as I can't bring stuff here from there; and I can't go there myself, because that would be like trying to put a door through itself. If it wasn't for the fact that I can't go it would be a perfect solution to get us all in the same place." She returned to transparency, allowing them to look some more.
John's gaze drifted to one Troll in particular. He'd been trying to pick out which one was Vriska, he'd had fun chatting with her even if she had been a bit crazy at times. The Troll in question had long hair, glasses, and orange God-Tier getup. He was pretty sure she was Vriska based on her looks but he was confused at why she was in a wheelchair, unless she was just being a jerk and using it as a seat. He pointed at the Troll. "Is that Vriska? She looks so sad."
Dave-Sprite was skeptical. "Dude how do you know that one's Vriska? It could be that one." He pointed to another Troll with glowing skin that was talking to Rose.
John defended his guesswork. "Well she had that spider motif, with the eight eyes and stuff? And that Troll has eight pupils, look."
Dave-Sprite squinted, and sure enough, the Troll in question did have seven pupils in one of their eyes. It was kind of gross.
John felt a longing to go meet all of them. To talk. Like he'd said earlier, he didn't mind Jade and Dave-Sprite's company, but he wanted to talk to all those other people as well. "Man… three years." He mumbled.
Jade solidified her head without John noticing much and she and Dave-Sprite gave each other a look. She fully solidified to catch John's attention. "Why don't you go there and meet up with them, let them know that the rest of us are safe and that the planets from our session are ok?"
John wanted to say yes but his sense of loyalty stopped him. He couldn't abandon one group of friends for another "But what about you? I don't want to leave you here alone for three years."
Jade decided to press the matter rather than leave it unresolved. "I wouldn't be alone, I'd have Dave-Sprite to keep me company. Plus all the other Sprites, and the Consorts.
Well…" John's resolve was already slipping when Dave-Sprite decided to add his own homebrew advice. He gripped John by the shoulders and looked him in the eyes. "John you want to meet Vriska, and the others, right?
John nodded.
"Then go. I mean look at them. Rose, Dave, all those aliens, in desperate need of John Egbert in their lives. I'd hate to think we're hogging the finite Egbert resources all to ourselves. I mean, look, you'll probably regret it either way. But if you do go I won't have to hear about it; and that's great."
John relented, brushing off Dave-Sprite's grip. His desire to go meet the Trolls being boosted by a feeling that he and Dave-Sprite might not mesh that well; that he might not want to spend three years stuck on a ship with the bird version of his best friend. "Ok ok. Well… I didn't think I'd be leaving the two of you so soon but here we go I guess."
He gave both of his friends a quick hug. Then Jade turned transparent once more and with a final wave John walked through her onto the meteor.
The Green Sun, The Meteor
Vriska sat. Not long after the scramble to find the bodies came up dry, Aradia and Sollux had joined the conversation. The two of them were going to give the meteor a psychic push towards its destination before going their own way. While their help would have been welcome at the other end; Aradia had been dead and now Sollux was dead, so it seemed only fair they got a break from all the excitement. From the sound of things the trip was going to take three years. Vriska didn't keep up with the rest however, her mind kept wandering to what had happened. Then she heard something that snapped her straight out of her mental fog. "EGBERT? HOW THE HELL DID YOU GET HERE?"
John. With that one word her heart leapt, only to come crashing back down. She'd been looking forwards to meeting him, but blanched at the thought that this was what his first impression of her would be; after all her bold claims and sass, reduced to this wreck.
John hugged his Human friends in greeting, saying hi to everyone and seeming generally amused by Karkat's faux outrage. Then his eyes fell on her and concern spread across his face. "What happened, is she alright?"
Rose spoke. "She was stabbed. She lost a lot of blood, but she should live. Sadly some of the other Trolls were not so fortunate." Positing a thinly veiled barb that Vriska was responsible for one of those less fortunate. John winched, remembering how Vriska had confessed to killing Tavros during their last conversation. Though it could be argued that it was self-defense rather than an execution, it had been avoidable.
Getting a look at her wound sent a chill down John's back. A lot of people close to him had been stabbed, all by the same person. "Who did it, Jack?" He asked, balling his fists in rage.
Dave rubbed the back of his neck and started explaining. "Erm.. not quite buddy. From what I've heard…" Only to be interrupted by a mid-sized Carapacian man appearing in much the same way John had. The Carapacian was bleeding from a sword wound, who did it being anyone's guess. John was confused, was that one of the ones he and Jade had picked up along with the planets? Rose and Kanaya rushed to the unconscious man's aid, repeating the same process of binding the wound they'd done with Vriska. The explanation of Vriska's injury stood unfinished, to be picked up at a later time.
With time counting down goodbyes were said and then Sollux and Aradia pushed them off. The Green Sun receded from view as their trajectory took them towards the new Human session. Everyone began dispersing from the roof. Heading off to the various chambers buried inside the meteor complex. Vriska griped the wheels of the chair and tried to move, but was still too weak from blood loss to make any progress.
Noticing her difficulty, John walked up as everyone else ignored her and left. With a genuine look of kindness on his face he asked her. "Would you like some help?"
Looking up at him Vriska felt a surge of defiance. Every fiber of her being told her to say no and continue trying on her own, even if she couldn't. John's earnestness won out however, and she relented. Simply saying "Yes."
John took position behind the wheelchair and began pushing. She had to admit this was much easier, so she mumbled out a quick "thank you" before the moment was lost. John smiled and said nothing, continuing to push the chair into the depths of the meteor. Before long Vriska nodded off, allowing the dark of unconsciousness to wash over her and take away the pain.