Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It took a perigee or two for most people to realize the increasingly irregular resource shipments had completely stopped. Most of the lowbloods hadn’t had access to them in over a sweep. By now even the ones who hadn’t already supplemented their meager stipends by hunting, scrounging for plants, or even just plain old bartering for food had gotten used to it. Those who couldn’t adapt were cullbait anyway.

 When the shipments stopped, though, the highbloods lost it. Had the Empire abandoned them for the last few seasons before conscription? Were they supposed to weed out the weak so there wouldn’t be as many people for the drones to bother with? Did every cohort have to go through this?

 Nearly half of the lowbloods had already gone through their first adult molts as the current generation approached nine sweeps old, but there was no sign of the drones. As time went on the rumors only got worse and stranger. Some said the heiress had been killed and the Condence was forfeiting this entire generation in revenge for stealing her sacred cull. Others whispered that there was a rebellion in the Fleet. In hushed, fearful tones in the bright of day, a few even dared wonder if the Condence had died. Without its Empress, what would the Fleet do?

 If anyone asked Karkat (not that they ever asked his opinion) he’d have to say the Fleet might as well have shoved itself up a black hole, preferably one that shot solar-system destroying gamma beams. It would have made his life a lot easier if they had just come down and culled him seasons ago. At least then it would have been done with. Instead here he was, in the middle of an encampment that had somehow turned into a fort, watching as their food supply ran off into the evening dim. Trolls milled about watching their domestic beefgrubs stampede. Tavros was nowhere to be seen, but his assistants were running around like headless cluckbeasts.

 “What the hell is wrong with you people?” Karkat shouted at the bystanders. “Stop standing there fondling your bulges and help round up those beefgrubs or by the mothergrub’s heaving eggsacks I will kick every one of your sitnubs until they fall off!” Thankfully, halfway through his rant some of the other trolls had attained sentience and ran towards the herd. Karkat didn’t stick around long enough to see if any more bothered following his orders. Instead, he dashed to Tavros’s hive and pounded on the door.

 “Tavros, you had better be awake in there!” He shoved the door open and stormed in. Normally he would at least wait for some kind of answer—it was never a good idea to barge into another troll’s hive unless you wanted them black, even if you did share a quadrantmate—but he didn’t have time for niceties. Anyhow, it wasn’t like Tavros had a vicious bone in his body.

 “Karkat?”

 “God I hope you’re dressed. Your stupid grubloaves got loose and your rancharuffians are more useless than a mute barkbeast.”

 “Oh. That’s, uh, not good. I’ll be out, in a sec.” Karkat could hear Tavros shuffling around in the respiteblock. Impatiently, he fiddled with his goggles. They were clunky, ugly things that he’d scrounged off Trollbay when it started to look like he might actually live long enough for his eye color to fill in.

 Tavros rolled in, taking up most of the room in the tiny main block. Tiny for him, at least. For most trolls, the hive's dimensions would have been perfectly adequate. The doors were easily wide enough for three normal trolls in order to accommodate his massive horns. If he could walk, Tavros would have loomed over Karkat. Even sitting in his four-wheeled-device, he was nearly as tall as Terezi. The tiny fairybull lusus sitting on his lap just underscored how ridiculous Tavros's height was. He made up for his useless legs by being built like a tank. His arms were already strong from hauling his wheeled-device over rough terrain all the time. After he’d molted, Tavros developed wide shoulders and a thick chest to back up that strength. Tavros’s dark skin and brown eyes let everyone know that he was nearly an adult.

 “Do you know what, uh, set them off?” Tavros asked as Karkat led him to the site of the clusterfuck.

 “Do I look like a beast-talking asshole with a coat-hanging appliance instead of a head here? Wait, no, that’s you!” Tavros rolled his eyes.

 “Okay. I can, uh, sense the herd leader now. This should only take, um, a couple minutes, I think.”

 “Great. I’ll start finding people to fix the fence.”

 With Tavros’ help it only took about thirty minutes to round up all the beefgrubs. This time, they didn’t even have to cull any for injuries. During the last stampede, one had smashed its mandibles on a rock so badly it had to be put down. Beefgrubs were hardier than hoofbeasts, but they made up for it in blinding stupidity.

 Karkat was just about to leave when one troll dragged another up to Tavros. The one doing the dragging was tall and wiry with one horn completely broken off. The one being dragged was barely taller than Karkat, his eyes starting to fill in with an orangish shade of brown. Neither wore symbols, but that was normal in the camp. Clothes were hard enough to make or find without fussing over monograms.

 “Is there, uh, something you need?” Tavros asked. The broken-horn one shoved the orangish one in front of her.

 “Apologize,” she ordered.

 “I- I’m sorry,” the orangish one said. “I set the grubs off.”

 Tavros just sighed heavily, but Karkat growled in frustration. “What the hell were you thinking?”

 “I just. I wanted to ride it.”

 “Ride it? Are you still a wiggler? You could have—”

 “Karkat.”

 “—cursed us all to a slow and painful—” Tavros bumped Karkat with the wheeled device to shut him up.

 “That was, uh, stupid. But, no one got hurt,” Tavros said. “Do we need to bring in Terezi?”

 Karkat shook his head. “She would just be disappointed about getting a confession so easy. Then I’d have to hear her whine even more about how there haven’t been any real crimes in this place to bring to justice. Like that’s a bad thing! So I guess it’s your call.”

 Tavros nodded and thought about it for a moment. “I think that, if you help with the fence, and help around the barn for a couple days, it’ll be okay.”

 “Great! Problem solved. Good luck, Tavros.”

 “Yeah. Uh, if you see Gamzee, would you tell him, that I’ll probably be late?”

 “Yeah, sure.”

 Karkat walked quickly towards the opposite end of the camp, where the main buildings were. The camp had started out with a handful of tents huddled against a rock face in a small valley. Over the last sweep, however, more trolls had fled the cities and suburbs as they turned into bloodbaths, and some of the refugees wound up here. The valley was actually pretty well situated, Karkat had to admit. The main path into it was a bottleneck that was easy to defend. There was enough room for the beefgrubs, a few snowmelt creeks from high in the mountains, forested land with edible plants, and not too many monsters. They had even found some natural caves that could be used for storage and shelter. For fifty-seven trolls and a handful of lusii, it was the perfect amount of space.

 Within the actual camp, though, they were packed tighter than a drone’s vestigial digestive chute. Trolls weren’t supposed to live in such close quarters. It was a miracle that they hadn’t had any murders yet. No, wait; it wasn’t actually a shitty miracle. It was a lot of shouting, a tealblood with a justice kink, and the knowledge that, on their own, most of them would be instant cullbait: just add highblood with half a functional thinksponge.

 To absolutely no one’s surprise, Terezi was waiting for Karkat when he reached the central block. She stood at the ready with her sword cane in front of her. As Karkat approached, she didn’t move except to grin.

 “You’re late, Mister Gross Concrete,” she said. Her tone was playful rather than scolding.

 “Tavros’s stupid grubs got loose.”

 “Overruled! It doesn’t change the fact that you should have been here thirty minutes ago.” She grabbed Karkat’s hand and hauled him off. Terezi might have been scrawny, but she had a grip like a vice. Karkat shouted and made a token attempt at wriggling his arm free in an effort to salvage his pride.

 Terezi let Karkat go once they were out of sight of the camp. Patrolling was dangerous enough with both hands free, let alone without. Even though the camp was well-protected at ground-level, there was always a chance that some suicidally determined idiot had climbed the mountains, or someone with psionics or telekinesis had simply flown over. Not to mention the forest had dangers of its own.

 They moved silently through the thick woods. Karkat took the ground, while Terezi hopped through the branches with an ease borne of living in a tree for most of her life. Every so often one of them would pause, and the other would wait without being signaled. They had done this almost every day for the last sweep. Keeping an eye—or a snout in Terezi’s case—on each other while surveying the land was second nature. Even though patrolling was exhausting and nerve-wracking at times, it was relaxing to be able to slip into easy teamwork.

 An explosive boom erupted over the valley. The two trolls froze where they stood. The birds around them took off in a scramble of squawking and feathers. A split-second later, Karkat’s voice relay device beeped.

 “Patrol teams, this is hivebase. Report in with your locations.”

 As Karkat responded to Sollux, Terezi climbed up higher in the trees. She could reach the canopy itself, where the branches were thinner than a troll’s finger and there was nothing to dig one’s claws into. It defied all logic and possibly the known laws of gravity.

 “There’s something in the sky! It’s bitter like dark chocolate covered in bright orange.”

 “A ship?”

 “YES, god!”

 Fear shot through Karkat like a bullet right to his gut. The fleet was coming back. This was it.

 He was fucked.

 Terezi leapt down and grabbed the relay device from his hands. He could hear her talking to Sollux, but the words didn’t reach his pan. Fear was quickly turning into nauseating dread in the pit of his digestion sac.

 There was a hand on his shoulder. Karkat leapt and spun—at Terezi. She didn’t look happy. Her usual grin was gone. Instead her lips were pressed into a tight line. There was a tension in her jaw like she was clenching her teeth.

 She’s worried too, he realized. Of course she would be. Being a tealblood didn’t mean she got a free pass from the culling drones. Her freakish powers of smell might not make up for her blindness to them.

 “What did he say?”

 “He’s tracking it.” Terezi’s tone was as grim as her expression. “There’s a good chance it’s going to come down around here. We’re closest.”

 Of course they were. “Keep watching it. We’ll need to be there when they land. Sollux is keeping the line open?” She nodded. “Good.”

 He didn’t say that way they’ll know what happened to us or they’ll know how long they have. If this really was a drone ship, most of the trolls in the camp wouldn’t survive the night. That was a fact. There wasn’t any use discussing it. If it was a long-lost supply ship, they just had to wait a little longer for the inevitable.

 Five minutes later, they were hiding on the edge of a clearing, watching the strange black vessel descend. Up in her tree, Terezi was still as a fangbeast preparing to strike, her sword drawn from the dragon-headed cane.

 It didn’t look like any of the Fleet ships Karkat had seen images of. He wasn’t sure what to make of that. It probably meant it wasn’t a drone ship. Probably. All the information he’d had on Fleet ship models was nine sweeps out of date anyhow. This was a box-shaped craft with two vertical cylinders on its side. It had white markings on the side, but he couldn’t make out what they were. The craft made a hellish noise like a million enraged stingbugs as it descended.

 Karkat tightened his grasp on his sickle. The thing was nearly at the tree line. He had never been as glad for his goggles as he was when the craft neared the ground. The wind from its cylinders kicked up small rocks and twigs like the most pointlessly aggravating tornado on Alternia.

 It hit the ground with a loud thud. The cylinders slowly whirred down. Within moments the only sound in the clearing was a very faint hum. Karkat realized he had been holding his breath. Breathing. That was two noises now. Spaceship humming, his own breathing, and the heavy thudding of his blood-pusher pounding in his chest. Three. Fuck it.

 A small panel on the front of the craft slid open. An ammo compartment? Karkat tensed up, ready to run. The craft hissed with static.

 “Greetings. We are scouts from the outer space hive ship Skaia. We are here on peaceful terms. Repetition: We are here on peaceful terms. May we request a truce-bound discussion?” The voice was feminine with a bizarre accent. She wasn’t using most of the trills, and the ones that she did use were in weird places. Also, her sentences were nearly gibberish.

 “Drones don’t speak, right?” Terezi asked.

 “The hell should I know?” Karkat replied in a harsh whisper. “What should we do? They’ve got to know we’re here.”

 “Brilliant deduction, oh great leader!”

 “Would you shut—”

 “I would like to again repeat that we are here on a mission of peace and request cordial dialogue,” the speaker interrupted. Karkat couldn’t be sure with her weird accent, but she sounded a little impatient.

 He took a deep breath and let it out in a huff. “We really don’t have a choice, do we.” Terezi didn’t respond. Karkat stood up and walked into the clearing. A soft noise behind him indicated that Terezi had followed.

 “We’re here!” he announced. “Now what the hell do you want?”

 “We promise no harm will occur on you if you do not initiate hostility. Do you agree?”

 “If you mean ‘we won’t attack if you don’t,’ then yeah, sure.” Hopefully they didn’t notice the slight wobble in his voice.

 There was a slight pause before they responded. “Good. Two of us are leaving the vessel. Please remain calm.” Calm, right. Karkat was as calm as a sleeping grub. He was the very epitome of calm, standing completely unconcerned in an unconsciously commanding pose. He wasn’t clutching his sickle with white-knuckled fear, honestly.

 Part of the ship’s hull folded open with a slight whirring noise. A figure in all white stood at the opening. It was wearing a full-body suit (not heavy enough for combat gear but still padded in vital areas) from head to toe. As it stepped onto the grass Karkat noticed a small rod on its belt (some kind of weapon?) and the purple markings on its helmet.

 Wait.

 The helmet.

 It didn’t have horns.

 It didn’t have horns.

 He barely noticed that a second figure came out of the ship while he was busy gaping at the hornless purpleblood. What had happened to the purpleblood? Had its horns been cut off? Was it trying to escape culling by returning to Alternia? There was some muffled speaking between the two strangers. It sounded weird, but Karkat wasn’t really sure why. Then the purpleblood reached up and unbuckled its helmet with one hand. It kept the other one on the rod at its belt.

 The creature underneath the helmet was not a troll. It couldn’t be. It had pale yellow hair and weird pinkish skin and no horns at all. Terezi snarled at it. Karkat had to fight to keep himself from doing the same thing.

 The creature didn’t seem unnerved by their reaction. Instead it looked them in the eyes and spoke in that weird, lilting accent.

 “My name is rohz luhlond. This other person is dzyawn egbrt. We are emissaries from the interplanetary hyuumn alliance.”

 “What the fuck. What the actual nookslurping fuck.” Karkat was standing in front of an alien. A real alien from another planet. It wasn’t possible. Nothing was supposed to be able to reach the surface of the planet except Imperial supply ships, drone ships, and conscription shuttles. There were wiggler tales about rogue adults who managed to slip through the defense systems, but they were always told by an internet friend’s neighbor’s auspitice or something. It simply wasn’t possible for aliens to come to Alternia.

 The alien in front of him stubbornly continued existing. It was eerily trolloid. Even beyond the simple body shape—bipedal, two arms with prongs and what looked like five nubs, two ganderbulbs, auricular shells, a face nub, and a normal mouth. Aliens in movies often had similar shapes, but with drone eyes or extra limbs and weird proportions. This alien looked almost exactly like a troll with weird coloration and no horns. The one with its face exposed was taller than Terezi but shorter than Karkat, even though it was a purpleblood. At least, it had purple eyes and helmet markings. Who knew how aliens worked. The other one was absurdly tall with broad shoulders. It had a blue marking on its helmet. At least that made sense.

 “We do not want hostility,” the alien said again.

  “You expect us to believe you got through the Orbital Exile Enforcement and Planetary Defense Network just to come chat? No. Hell no. Do we look like we just pupated last night?” Karkat said. Neither he nor Terezi lowered their weapons.

 “We wish to facilitate peaceful rapport with you,” the alien said, “for the best of both of our species.” It was way too calm as it spoke. Karkat couldn’t tell if the near-monotone was because the alien couldn’t make the right sounds or because it was honestly bored. Maybe it didn’t really know what it was saying and had just memorized a script? That would explain why it kept using equal-hemocaste pronouns.

 Terezi cackled at the alien. “Why don’t you go find the Fleet? I’m sure they would love to ‘facilitate rapport.’” She grinned, showing off her sharp teeth.

 The alien smiled back with closed lips. “Our people have met the Fleet. That is why we are here.”

 “If you’re coming here to try to grovel for your pathetic lives before the Empire tears you into pink meaty shreds and sucks your planet's sun dry, you’re in the wrong place. Sorry you went through all the trouble of hiking out of your backwater solar system for nothing.” The alien’s smile disappeared, returning to a sour sort of look. What were they playing at? Did they think they could really make peace with the Empire by talking to a couple non-adults in the middle of nowhere? They had managed to avoid the defense network; maybe they were planning to hold Alternia hostage. Either way, they didn’t need him and Terezi.

 The purple-eyed one glanced at its partner and said something in that weird, mumbly language of theirs. It responded in a much deeper voice.

 “How far do you think we could get before their ship gunner fries us?” Karkat asked Terezi quietly.

 “I could make it halfway back to camp. You would end up a crispy black cherry before you reached the creek.” She sniffed at the aliens again with a pensive look on her face. “Maybe we should play along for a while.”

 “Terezi. No. We are not FLARPing with aliens.”

 “Not like that! Well, maybe a little.” By now the two aliens had stopped talking and were watching them. Or at least Karkat assumed they were both watching. The taller one still hadn’t taken off its helmet. Karkat had to admit he was wondering what the aliens were up to. Chances were that he would end up dead no matter what. They were just acting so completely unlike anything he’d imagined aliens would, he couldn’t help being a little curious.

 “Okay. Fine. Let’s do your stupid pretend emissary thing. You’re the Noble Ambassassin Pyrope and I’m the Delegarroter Vantas, and we are blazing new trails for trollkind by attempting to reason with pink alien things whose plan of attack is talking trolls to death. Our sacrifice will enable others to come up with some kind of aural shell blockers that protect a troll’s sponge from the deadening mush language that is alienese.”

 “Noble Ambassassin? I’m flattered, Delegarroter Vantas! I may even decide not to use your body as a shield during the griefing part of the negotiations!” She stood up straight and put her sword back in the cane. Karkat didn’t put down his sickle, but he did move into a less obviously defensive stance.

 “Have you decided an action?” the purple-eyed alien asked. “My partner has reminded me that we should make known our situation.”

 “We’re willing to listen, Peaches-and-Cream,” Terezi said. The alien nodded.

 “Do you know any of the current events about the Fleet?” it asked.

 Before Karkat could demand to know what kind of bilgesucking idiot the alien was, Terezi spoke, “Asking for tactical information isn’t a very good way to start off negotiations, Emissary Lulond!” Karkat snapped his jaw closed. If the aliens thought they actually could contact the Fleet they might let them live longer.

 The alien smiled just slightly. “Apologies. I was not asking for tactics information. I only wanted to know for…” it paused and seemed to struggle for a word. “This conversation would be more easy if I knew where to start.”

 “God, we’re so sorry for making this difficult for you,” Karkat spat. “How dare we not be prepared at all times for a meeting with lusus-mimicking aliens. We really should have set out our best piles and brought copies of current event broadcasts to entertain your doubtless hideous asses. Maybe you’d prefer we cook a lawnring meal basket and had an impromptu briefing with every gaping ulcerated nook that fell out of the sky? Or here’s a thought: Maybe, just maybe, you can tell us what the fuck you want! You sure as fuck didn’t come all the way to Alternia from whatever shithole of a planet you’re from just to make friends with a couple random wigglers.”

 As usual, Karkat regretted his words the moment they were out of his mouth. These were aliens that were probably going to kill him, and he just couldn’t contain his verbal spew long enough to not insult them, and instead make them get to the graphic murder section of the negotiations faster. The taller alien had taken a half-step forward during his rant, its hand on the cylinder thing on its belt. That had to be a weapon of some kind, no matter how benign it looked. The purple-eyed one held its hand up, though, as if signaling the other to stop. Purple-eyes looked at Karkat. He couldn’t quite read its face. It wasn’t sizing him up, exactly, like a troll might to a potential threat. It was more like it was examining him the way a scienterrorist would a sample. Not a particularly interesting sample, either, just something completely mundane they were getting tired of looking at. For a moment Karkat was certain that it could see right through his goggles—no, right through his skin to the disgusting red viscera inside.

 “I understand,” it said at last. “I apologize. You are correct. We need to be more abrupt.” Karkat got the feeling that wasn’t the word it meant. Aliens. It turned to the other alien and mumbled something. The other one nodded.

 “Repeating what I said earlier: my name is rowz lulond. I hold the position alien science specialist. My partner is named dzyawn ehgbrt. He is minor squad soldier leader. We are on a mission to make peace with Alternians. You have guessed our species have fought. Currently we are winning. Our leaders believe we can make allies with you, so that we do not have to kill you.”

 “This is a bold claim!” Terezi said. “What proof do you have that your people are winning?”

 The alien did that unnerving staring-through-your-glasses thing at Terezi. She didn’t seem to notice. “We blockaded your transport relays a sweep ago.”

 Hoofbeastshit, Karkat wanted to say, but his blatherpipe wasn’t working for some reason. They had gotten past the defense systems. Obviously they had found Alternia somehow—and the relays were the fastest way to travel through space. They might actually be telling the truth.

 “I know you do not want to trust us. You do not have to trust us immediately. However, you would be intelligent to believe me. Our forces scattered the Fleet. We blockaded the transport relays. We killed Her Imperious Condescension.”

 “What?” Terezi’s grin failed her. She recovered quickly and gestured at the alien with her cane. “Your previous evidence is entirely circumstantial. If you keep this up I will be forced to conclude you are lying.”

 The taller alien put a frond on the purpleblood’s shoulder. They exchanged some kind of look—maybe it actually could see through nearly-opaque glass?—before the purpleblood nodded. The taller one unhooked its helmet.

 This alien's skin was brown. At least that was something close to a normal color for skin to be, even if it wasn’t grey. In the right light, the alien might just look like a hornless adult troll. Its hair was normal-colored and messy. It had big eyes with bright blue irises. Definitely a blueblood, or whatever their equivalent was. It smiled at the two trolls in a way that would have been threatening if not for the fact that it had wide, flat, herbivore teeth like a giant hopbeast.

 “I speak Alternian less well rohs,” it babbled. “Sorry! She’s saying the truth! We don’t want hurting you. I we, uh… There’s no war now. So we can be friends, maybe?”

 Even the purpleblood gaped at the blueblood like it couldn’t believe the shit coming out of its partner’s mouth.

 “Suddenly everything makes sense! Your species is absolutely, egregiously, shit-hive maggots insane! You managed to fall through a relay and collide with this planet out of sheer idiot luck. That is the only way the words you just said made anything approaching sense.”

 The blueblood stared at him dumbly and said something in alienese. It made a weird wheezing noise every so often. Maybe this one is broken, Karkat thought. It almost reminded him of when Gamzee had constantly been in a sopor daze.

 The purpleblood cleared its throat. “My partner is crude, but correct. We are not trying to contact your government. We want to be allies with you. Your village.” It paused like it was waiting for a reaction. Karkat felt like he now knew how his computers must have when trying to process one of his crappy codes, right before exploding. This was too pants-shittingly stupid to be real.

 It continued, “You do not need to answer now. Our ship will stay here for three nights. For now we will provide you with medical supplies to see our benign intent.”

 Something thudded to the ground. Karkat turned to it with his sickle raised (he absolutely did not jump in surprise, really). There was a silvery box on the grass a couple meters away. A third alien stood over it. This one’s uniform was a dull grey rather than white, and it didn’t have any markings. Before Karkat could do anything more than wonder how he had missed it, the alien flickered and disappeared.

 A chill went down Karkat’s spine. There had been a third alien there the entire time. If Terezi had noticed it she would have said something. The aliens could have killed them at any time in the last few minutes in myriad interesting ways. Maybe it was a ruse to get them to accept the “medical supplies”? Who knew what was actually in the box. Karkat imagined all sorts of terrible artificial plagues in need of test subjects. The purpleblood had said it was some kind of scienterrorist.

 “If you want to speak, you know where we are,” the purpleblood said. “It was a pleasure meeting you.”

 With that the alien turned its back on them and walked back into the ship. The blueblood didn’t follow.

 “Hey, you didn’t tell your names!” it said. “You know our names. Not Dayv – that guy was Dayv. What’s your name?”

 “You barely speak our language, chucklefuck. Do you even know what the garbled sludge that’s pouring out your windhole means half the time?”

 Terezi put a hand on his shoulder. “My apologies, Emissary Ehgbrt. We have been unforgivably rude hosts! I am Terezi Pyrope,” she emphasized by tapping her hand to her chest as she said her name, “and this is Karkat Vantas.”

 “Nice to meet you!” the alien said. Even though it wasn’t doing the tones right it somehow managed to sound way too chipper. The alien was taller than both of them and looked like it could punt Karkat across the clearing with ease, but it was fucking chipper. It waved at them before following the purpleblood. The last alien reappeared in the doorway. Its head jerked in what might have been a nod. Then the door slid back into place, leaving Karkat and Terezi alone.

 “No one is going to fucking believe us, are they.” 

Chapter Text

"It's probably not a bomb," Sollux said at last.

Karkat stopped pacing. "Probably," he echoed. "Probably? Is that all? Thank fuck it only might kill us all in a conflagration of bucket-guzzling idiocy!" He gestured wildly to emphasize his words. "I am so glad we have a great genius here to let us know it probably isn't a bomb. Sure, we could still die horribly from an explosion, or a flesh-eating virus, or some kind of gas that melts our bulbs out. But at least it probably isn't a bomb!"

"Are you done flipping your shit?" Sollux drawled as Karkat paused in his speech. "Wait, who am I talking to. KK, I have done every scan I can think of without opening the case. Radiation, psionics, biotech, electromagnetic," he counted each example on his fingers like he was talking to a pan-scrambled wiggler. Sollux somehow managed to be a condescending shit lord even when he was sitting on the ground with a scrap of plastic to keep the dirt from getting into his husktop. It would have been funny if the reason Sollux was being forced to confront nature didn't involve a possible alien bomb. "It all came back negative. I can tell you it's not airtight, so opening it probably won't release any kind of airborne contagion. And before you start, I know there are things I can't test. Give me some credit. I've thought up every way they could kill us and then some."

"That's great! Glad you could spare some of that heaving, ego-bloated mass you call a thinkpan to worrying about other people for a while," Karkat retorted. "Maybe you could take the next step and help think of ways to keep us all from becoming a carrion free-for-all?"

"Yeah, let me just plug that in my 'Omniscience' program." Sollux snapped his husktop closed. "We've got two choices."

"No fucking shit."

"We open it or destroy it."

"I know! I know." Karkat felt like tearing his hair out. Sure, he could think of some other ways to deal with it. The first thing that came to mind was having Sollux throw the case somewhere on the other side of the mountain range. But that just meant making it someone else's problem, which was such a horrible idea that it went around and became a non-idea. Any other plan he could come up with in the next few minutes wouldn't be much better. That left only two real options. The best part was he didn't even know which would get them all killed. What if not opening the case insulted the aliens and prompted them to raze the camp?

"KK."

"What?"

"You know we're fucked either way."

Karkat growled. "Really? I had no idea. Thanks for reminding me that no matter what we do everyone here is a walking corpse. That makes me feel so much better about possibly killing everyone." Sollux rolled his eyes. One of his horns was sparking blue with what could be annoyance or a sign of an incoming headache. Knowing their luck, it was probably both. Karkat hissed out a breath between his teeth. He could apologize for being a shitty friend and giving Sollux a headache if they didn't explode.

"Open it," Karkat said. He tried to ignore the way his voice caught in his throat. Sollux raised an eyebrow, but he didn't argue. Instead he raised a hand out towards the case. Red and blue psionics crackled to life around Sollux. With a flick of his wrist the energy surrounded the silver case in a cage of colored lightning. It wouldn't do much if there was a big explosion, Karkat knew, but it was better than nothing. Sollux made a small gesture and the case's latches popped. The top swung open.

Nothing happened.

Karkat took a deep breath. Then he let it out. They weren't dead. He almost couldn't believe it.

The objects in the case looked medical, like the alien had said. Some of it was basic first aid equipment--bandages, clear thread and thick needles for stitching, antibiotic ointment, that kind of stuff. Most of it, though, was labelled with technical terms. Karkat didn't recognize most of it, but then, he'd only had rustblood-level medical schoolfeedings. Those covered the absolute basics anyone needed to know like wound-care, the dangers of sun exposure, common diseases, and the ever-popular "Why Is My Skin Falling Off: Biological Changes during Adult Molt (For Skin Necrotizing Diseases Please Consult Medical Feed 336600.61.21025)." The vast majority of his knowledge of medicine came from movies and TV shows, which admittedly weren't the most scientifically accurate sources even if Medith and Derrek did have a beautifully serendipitous matespritship. Sollux identified a few vials as medicines—one was a stimulant that aided the absorption of other medicines, another was used for fungal infections--but only a highblood would have any idea what most of it was supposed to be.

"Can we go now?" Sollux whined after Karkat had finished his third review of the case's contents. "I think all this fresh air is giving me a headache."

Kakat snapped the case shut. "Yeah. Let's get this over with."

 

---

 

The main hive was a small, ugly building made of badly-hewn boards and stone. Really it was more of a hovel than a building. A bad storm would probably blow the whole thing over. Inside it didn't look much better. Dark and dusty, with drafts coming in from odd angles and not quite enough ceiling clearance to be comfortable. There were only two irregularly shaped windows, and those had thick curtains over them. This was the first building they’d constructed, seasons ago, before anyone showed up who knew anything about architecture. Sollux had promptly claimed one corner as his own, filling it with all of the assorted computer junk he had managed to salvage. At least it was wide enough to accommodate twenty trolls more or less comfortably. Right now the building held only seven, including Karkat.

Gamzee stood up from his place next to Tavros and slouched towards Karkat. "Best bro, you got my worry bladder all filled up," he crooned. "Motherfuckin' wicked sis wouldn’t be telling a brother what his diamond was all into until he got himself here."

Karkat felt another flare of annoyance burst through his pan. He, Terezi, and Sollux had agreed not to discuss what had happened until after this meeting. It was one thing not to talk about aliens where random people would overhear and go mad with speculation. It was another to leave Gamzee worrying about him unnecessarily.

"I'm fine. I am sick of all the hoofbeastshit that’s happened tonight. Assuming nothing else blisteringly ridiculous happens today I guess I won't turn into a supernova of rage." Gamzee wrapped Karkat up in his long, gangly arms. He smelled like sweat and dirt and Karkat wasn't particularly thrilled to be hugged in public like this but he really, really needed it. He gave Gamzee a tight hug back and then let go. "Come on, you whimsical piece of clown shit. We've got a meeting to do."

Their semi-official little council consisted of seven members, usually. For the most part each person was in charge of one of the work teams that got shit done around camp. Tavros had his rancharuffians. Sollux was the best they had with technology, which could still be ridiculously helpful even though they were cut off from most of the world. Terezi and Gamzee had taken it upon themselves to enforce order early on. Terezi had even managed to convince some poor rubes to be her police force. Then there were two girls Karkat and the others hadn't known until they joined the camp. Issimi Anaxes was a greenblood who actually knew something about construction, and Nreeve Kathet was a redblood who was better at recognizing edible and poisonous plants than anyone. Then there was Karkat. He didn’t really lead any team, with the possible exception of the meal preparation block on odd days. He had declared himself leader in the beginning of their poorly-planned excursion to the middle of nowhere and simply continued yelling people into submission until the title stuck.

There were some sad little reclining cushions on the floor. They were made out of woven plant material and filled with more dry plant material. Only Sollux's corner had actual furniture. Issimi had built that, so it actually looked like it wouldn't fall over at the slightest provocation. Sollux’s corner was the "command center" of the whole camp. All their records were kept on the little hive server built by the few bees Sollux had managed to salvage from his hivestem.

Karkat plopped down on one of the cushions and had Gamzee take the one next to him. The others were mostly milling around. Sollux had retreated to his corner. Tavros wheeled over to sit on the other side of Gamzee. Issimi seemed to be explaining some kind of diagram to Terezi and Nreeve.

"Hey!" Karkat shouted. "Everyone sit down so we can get this over with before the mob out there gets bored and decides to do something suicidally insane." Sure enough, all eyes were now on him. "Obviously Terezi and I aren't dead, so everyone is going to be tossing around rumors about what actually happened. The truth is even stupider than anything most of the bulgehumpers here can come up with, so you all had better know it firsthand.

"The ship that landed earlier wasn't from the Fleet. It's an alien landing party."

The room went silent. Outside was a different matter. The trolls listening at the windows and door didn't even bother trying to pretend they weren't eavesdropping.

"You're, uh, sure they were really aliens?" Tavros asked. Karkat nodded.

"They didn't have horns and were colored weird. They called themselves hyu-mens."

"They smelled wrong," Terezi added. "Trolls all smell different, but they still all smell like trolls. Even after molt! The aliens were musty and weird."

“Aliens,” Issimi repeated. “You know no one’s gonna believe that.”

“Anaxes, would I make up something this dumb?” Karkat asked. “Better yet, would Terezi go along with something this stupid if it weren’t true?”

Sollux chimed in. "If it was just KK I'd say he'd finally short-circuited his sponge." Predictably, he ignored Karkat's shout of protest.  “They’d have to have really good simulators to make the voices I was picking up. Plus they gave us that box of medicines.”

“What box?” Tavros asked. Sollux pointed out the silvery case next to his equipment.

Karkat explained, "They gave that to us as a ‘sign of their good intentions’ or some shit. It really is medical supplies, as far as Sollux and I could tell." This last he directed towards Terezi. She gave a brief nod.

From there he explained their encounter with the aliens in a more chronological order. Terezi interrupted occasionally to add details she had noticed, like the fact that the aliens' eyes were white instead of yellow. Even though the aliens apparently smelled all wrong, she was adamant that she could still tell that they weren't lying.

"It's different, but I could still smell their emotions easily!" she insisted. "The Egburt one was really obvious. He got really startled when Karkat started ranting."                                                                                                                               

Nreeve giggled. "I suppose that's an easy reaction to test."

To Karkat's annoyance it seemed that Terezi had not been able to detect the third hyumen after all. She muttered something dark about oil rainbows when Karkat brought it up. Sollux, on the other hand, didn't seem that surprised by the news that aliens could turn invisible. He just started rambling about light refraction and things that no one else cared about. Karkat decided to ignore it and finish the last of his account.

"They said that they would stay around for a few more nights and retreated into the ship," he concluded. "And that's when we scrambled back to camp like a couple of frightened squeakbeasts."

"Aliens," Anaxes said, sounding like she'd just stepped in something cold and wet. "Why would they bother coming here?"

"They were adamant about the whole making allies thing," Terezi said. "They really think the Empress is dead."

Karkat felt his stomach churn at the thought. It didn't seem possible. She was the reason they had an interstellar Empire instead of a bunch of squabbling warlords fighting over bits of Alternian dirt. For millennia she had kept that Empire, and all of trollkind, united under her iron claw. The idea that she could be gone was both laughable and terrifying.

"What would they need us for if they already killed the Empress?" he asked. From what he had been schoolfed on the Empire's history alliances were only made with aliens in order to defeat a common enemy. Occasionally a defeated species would be allowed to live if they proved useful, but not dangerous. Even then he doubted anyone asked if they wanted to be friends.

"Can't be expecting aliens to act any kind of rational."

Gamzee had been quiet through the whole thing. Even when the others felt the need to make comments about how little they believed what Karkat was saying, Gamzee's only response was to put a supportive hand on Karkat's shoulder. Now he spoke in that too-soft voice that usually preceded a bout of yelling.

"Might be as they're up and telling the gods' motherfuckin' truth. Might be they're full of vicious lies all made to be twisting up a troll's pan." The last wasn't a shout exactly, but Gamzee was slowly warming up his resonation bladder for a proper bone-grinding roar. Karkat put his hand on the back of Gamzee's. He didn't need to be placated every time he got worked up like a spoiled wiggler, but the physical contact made Karkat feel better. "But we ain't gonna get to knowing anything about what all they've got to say if we don’t go askin’ them what they’re all about.”

"Uh, yeah. I mean," Tavros stammered, "about, that first thing. They're not trolls, so, it doesn't make sense to act like they are?"

Terezi's mouth narrowed into a thin line while the two of them were speaking. "You didn't meet the scienterrorist one. I don't think they're all that different."

That killed the conversation a bit. Karkat couldn't help remembering that feeling that he was being measured up and vivisected. It wasn't quite the same kind of fear he'd associated with adults--that was more of the shit-your-pants and cower, hoping that they'll at least kill you quickly sort. He had no idea what the alien was even looking for, what it was measuring him against. Karkat knew what other trolls would see as reasons to cull him. There was no such comfort with the aliens.

"What is it we're deciding here anyway?" Sollux asked. "Basically we talk to them or we don't, right?"

"Have you had any luck with that internet connection?" Karkat asked him.

"A little. It doesn't work most of the time and cuts out after a couple minutes. I think the mountains interrupt the signal." He shrugged. "I'll see what I can find about alien sightings." It was better than nothing. They might have been safer from raiding here, but their isolation also meant they had no idea what was going on in the rest of the world.

"I think," Terezi said thoughtfully, "that we should at least ask them to clarify their terms. It would be irresponsible to make a decision either way otherwise."

"That's, um, something that sounds good, to me, too," Tavros said. It was a good compromise, but there was something that was nagging at the back of Karkat's mind the whole time.

"What are we supposed to do if the Fleet does show up?" he said. "Sit on our asses and twiddle our prongs until they kill us for having contact with aliens?"

"Different reason, same result," Issimi muttered.

"We don't know that!" Karkat insisted. "Not everyone here is cullbait! If we end up in cahoots with a bunch of aliens we will be!"

"Then leave," Issimi snapped. Of course she took it personally. Her matesprit was a psionic. He was almost certainly destined for a helmsblock come Ascension.

"Do you have a rock for a thinkpan? I'm not talking about myself!" He started to stand up, but Gamzee was still holding his hand and refused to budge. Instead he jolted up and promptly flopped back to the ground. "What the hell?" he spat out.

"Sis is all kinds of rude, assuming things she ain't got reasons to be wondering," Gamzee said, "but she's got a motherfuckin’ bitchtits idea in." Thankfully Tavros was able to translate clown-to-Alternian because Karkat was currently unable.

"We are, uh, going to let everyone else decide, what they want to do," he said. "If they don't want to be, uh, allied with us, anymore, they don't have to be."

Before Karkat could think about that one any more Terezi decided to take control of the meeting. "So it's decided! We seven agree to hear out the hyumens' request for an alliance. We will discuss this with our teams and make note of any further concerns, such as guilt by association." The others slowly made sounds of assent. Karkat found himself nodding even though he was teetering on the edge of panic. "Who's going to meet with the hyumens tomorrow?" She faced towards him with a shit-eating grin. Karkat snorted.

"Someone has to keep you from slobbering all over them," he said. Then more seriously, "We should have backup just in case things go wrong, but we don't know what will happen if more people show up to the meeting."

"I believe that's grape jelly's job, then!"

Tasks were quickly sorted out and everyone began to leave to assemble the various trolls who were part of their "teams." Gamzee ruffled Karkat's hair in apology as he stood up to go.

"We'll get our jam up and on today, all right, my best bro?"

"Yeah, fine. Go talk to your Junior SubLegislators." Gamzee chuckled at Karkat as he left. He and Terezi more or less shared the job of keeping order by being absolutely terrifying in different ways. And speaking of...

"Terezi."

"Yes, cherry-red?" she said in that too-sweet, teasing voice.

"What the fuck were you thinking, not telling Gamzee I was all right?" Karkat didn't get into her personal space--he didn't have a death wish--but he did stand as tall as he could, with his hands loose at his sides.

Terezi frowned, her nose crinkling a bit like she wanted to snarl at him. Instead she gritted her teeth. "You weren't all right."

"I-"

"You said that box might be a bomb!" she snapped. "Did you want me to say 'oh no, everything will be peachy'? How do you think he would have handled it if you'd been right?"

Badly. No, worse than badly. Gamzee hadn't really been unstable since he'd gotten through the sopor withdrawals, but that was with Karkat's help. If he wasn't there—Shit. He had been worrying about everyone dying from the explosion. He hadn't stopped to think that it might only have killed him and Sollux. He'd gotten so wrapped up in his own self-centered fuckery that he didn't think about what Gamzee must have been going through. He was the worst moirail in the history of trollkind.

A bright burst of pain in his shoulder broke Karkat's self-deprecating reverie.

"God! Karkat, you are so dumb sometimes!" Terezi said. "Do I have to drub more sense into you?" She raised her cane threateningly.

"I was an idiot, okay? I am the worst troll to ever hatch and I'm eternally sorry to every aspect of the universe that has to exist in the same plane of reality as me." He'd been unconsciously relaxing his stance the whole while, but he finally dropped his head in defeat. To his surprise, Terezi didn't say anything. She sighed heavily, turned around, and walked out the door.

Karkat stood there for a few minutes after she was gone. He distinctly felt as if he had missed something important.

 

---

 

The next evening Karkat was woken up far too early by a nasty daymare. He couldn't really remember it and had no desire to try, but it left him with a jittery, uneasy feeling.

He had jammed with Gamzee late into the morning, which had definitely helped with the worst of his nerves. It didn't get rid of them entirely, though. He was still afraid that there was no way that anyone would survive this mess. What if the aliens killed them for not agreeing to their terms? What if they did agree, but got slaughtered by the Imperial Drones?

Nightbreak didn't bring any easy answers. It did, however, allow him to leave the tent and grab food. He chatted briefly with the troll on meal preparation duty while he waited for Terezi to wake up. Nreeve had already assigned other people to cover the shifts Karkat was supposed to be working. As "leader" of this assbag jubilee Karkat did a little bit of everything in addition to shouting until people got in line. The only thing he didn't do very often was construction, partially because he didn't have any magic powers and mostly because the people on Issimi's team happened to be raging douchefucks.

Case in point: one yellowblood with a grudge, whose common sense had blown out his ass a very long time ago. This particular amalgam of bad ideas and poor self-control went by the name of Cahill Feynaz. Once upon a season ago Gamzee had kicked him off the security team, and Feynaz had inexplicably blamed Karkat ever since. He was taller than Karkat with uneven horns and an unfairly pretty face.

"You expect us to believe this shit?" he said by way of greeting. The troll Karkat had been talking to was suddenly nowhere to be found.

"Hello, Feynaz. No, you weren't interrupting anything. Please, continue to spill effluvia from the gaper you call a mouth without any context."

"You're gonna go talk to aliens. You."

"Is that what Nreeve said?" Karkat took a bite of the squawkbeast meat and continued to not look at Feynaz.

"Would you stop flirting and listen to me?"

Karkat rolled his eyes. "You seem to be assuming that I give anything approaching a shit about you. I haven't even finished breakfast yet. I have no shit to give." It took a moment before Feynaz parsed that and pretended to gag.

"This is what I'm talking about! Who the fuck thought you should be allowed to talk to anyone?"

"Oh my globe-fondling fuck, Feynaz, I do not care. Go find someone else to talk into tearing their own audial tubes out. Terezi and I were the closest to the landing site, and we thought it would tax the aliens' primitive thinkpans to make them interact with anyone different. I have food to finish before Pyrope drags her bony carcass out of her pile."

Instead of doing the reasonable thing and leaving Karkat the fuck alone, Feynaz sat down on the other side of the dining platform. "I'm not saying they should drop Pyrope. She's crazy but at least she knows not to start mouthing off to everything with a pulse."

"Well. That's it. You have cured me of my desire to finish my breakfast. If we rented you out we would end hunger because everyone would willingly starve to death rather than listen to you talking about anyone's mouth ever again."

Now Feynaz was the one doing the ignoring. He idly waved a hand while acting like he was musing on the topic. "I don't want the job, obviously. I'm not good enough for anything but being a glorified construction drone. Chyurl, on the other hand--"

"If your matesprit wants to play ambassador then she can talk to Pyrope or me on her own." Karkat had better ways to waste his time than sitting around listening to some grubfucking throwback trying to try to convince him that he should abdicate whatever tenuous position he had and give it to said bulgebiter's matesprit. He swallowed down the rest of his breakfast and stood up to go. Unsurprisingly, Feynaz followed him.

"Don't you have something else to do?" Karkat demanded. "Gaper pit duty? Maybe run headfirst into a tree for a few hours?"

"I'm only trying to help," Feynaz wheedled. "Your abrasive personality might work on the rabble around here, but you and I both know you're the worst choice for a diplomat." He managed to say that like it was a bald statement of fact, as if he was commenting on the weather instead of insulting Karkat to his face. Karkat's fists shook. He was rattling a warning growl deep in his chest. The safety of his hive and his moirail was only about ten yards away now. Karkat didn’t feel like starting the evening with a shouting match. He really wanted to save all of his aggravation for dealing with the aliens.

His mind-loop was broken off by a sharp "Ow!" Terezi announced herself with a swift drub to Feynaz's ankles.

"So sorry, Mister Mango," she said, "I must not have seen you there!"

"Of course," he said, scowling. "I'll go tell Chyurl about your suggestion, Vantas."

"Sure. Bye."

Terezi didn't say anything until Feynaz was long out of earshot. "Do I want to know what that was about?"

Karkat shook his head. "Just the usual. He wants Chyurl to be an ambassador now. When are we doing this suicidal FLARP thing again?"

"As soon as we wake everyone up! You get to deal with your clown while I rouse the troops."

 

---

 

There was one alien sitting outside when they arrived. It wasn’t either of the ones they had seen unmasked the night before. This one was dark-skinned with long, curly hair, and it wore an olive green outfit. Its suit was of similar design to the others', but less bulky and with more obvious pockets. The alien stood as they walked into the clearing. It was much taller than either Karkat or Terezi and had a very curvy build.

 “ei! You came back!” It grinned, wide and dumb like that blueblood. Despite the suit color, its irises were a bright shade of green. “Hi! My name is cheiid arlee. You’re Cahrcut Fendes and Terrzi Pyrope, right?” Of course it would absolutely mangle their names. At least it tried the trill in Terezi’s name, even if it did it wrong. Fendes, though…

“Hovercraft?” Karkat echoed. “Is there something wrong with your word pipe? Vantas. Van. Tas.”

“Vvahn-Tas,” it repeated. “Okay. You try!”

“What.”

It kept grinning. “My name! You try.” Then it babbled something in alienese. Karkat growled.

“We came here to talk to your Emissary, not to have wiggler friends play time.”

Its face crinkled up and it tilted its head in confusion. "Emis-ur-? Is that rohs?"

"Emissary," Terezi repeated, slowly, emphasizing all the tones. She even managed to drop the faint trill that usually accented her speech. "Lulond said that's what she and Ehgbrt were. What do you do, Miss 'arlee?" She copied the aliens' habit of only using equal-caste pronouns. Terezi tended to do that anyway with friends, but not random trolls she'd just met.

The alien moved its lips silently as if feeling the words out before it spoke. "I fly a ship! Only on this mission, however. On Skaia I fix ed- engines."

An engineliminator. Shit. The thought that some poor grubsucker might be stuffed in the back of that little ship made Karkat's guts lurch like someone was twisting them into a balloon beast. He didn't want to think of how Sollux might react. He did anyway, imagining the clearing going up in an explosion of psionic energy, or a suicidal attack on the ship that only ended with Sollux dead or, worse, barely alive as aliens threaded wires under his skin, hooking him up to one of their own ships--

If it had noticed that both he and Terezi had frozen, the alien didn't seem to react. "I never met Alternians! My language teacher was hyumun. It's good to meet you!" It said the last part more like one single word than a full sentence, the tones all more or less correct if a bit sing-songy.

"Great! Everyone's friends now. Let's join hands and frolic around like happy fucking elves. Where the hell is Lulond?" Karkat couldn't understand why this alien seemed so unconcerned at being alone with a couple of trolls. If all the other aliens were sitting around being invisible just to fuck with them Karkat was going to scream. In anger, not surprise.

"Rohs is eating breakfast! We didn't think you...will? return."

Next to Karkat, Terezi inhaled deeply and faced towards open air next to the alien. "Who's hiding over there?" The alien's eyes widened in surprise. The yellows were actually white like Terezi had said. It made the alien look a little like a corpse. Then the alien smiled weakly.

"Dayv," it said, then continued in alienese.

Yet again the grey-suited alien appeared out of nowhere. At least, Karkat assumed this was the same one. Hadn't the blueblood said the grey one's name was "def" or something? Unlike the night before it had an actual fucking sword strapped to its belt in addition to one of those cylinder weapons. It spoke, in alien, and its voice was a low droning sound. The greenblood replied in the same language with lots of rising tones. It was almost pretty to listen to when the greenblood was talking, even though it sounded more like birdsong than actual words.

Maybe the grey one was a laughsassin? Karkat had no idea. All he knew about laughsassins was from the occasional action thriller Sollux had forced him to watch. They were the elite assassins of the clown cult, who obeyed only the Empress and the Grand Highblood. In the movies they tended to go into melodic, bone-resonating monologues when they came across traitors, cullbait, and aliens. So far the colorless alien had barely spoken in more than a low mumble. Besides, Karkat was pretty sure laughsassins were never hemononymous.

"How did you see him?" the greenblood asked.

"Oh, I have my ways," Terezi said. "Does Deiyve not speak Alternian?"

The hemononymous one interrupted with more babbling.  The greenblood--okay, fine, Chyeid responded with a roll of her eyes and a retort. Dayv popped something on his neck and then slid off his helmet. The first thing Karkat noticed was that this alien actually did almost look like a lusus. It was even paler than Rohs, with a pinkish tinge to its features. Its short hair was flat white. Even its eyebrows were white. At least, Karkat thought they were. Almost as quickly as Dayv uncovered his head he put a huge pair of sunglasses on his face.

"Yo," he said. "Take I to your leader 'cause Dee Strai is here to make beats on your thinkpans. Like bombs but rhyth-ams."

For a moment everything went so quiet Karkat was certain that his eardrums simply exploded from the horror of what they had experienced. Then Terezi cackled.

"A pleasure to meet you, Mister Strai!" she crowed. "Such a shame we weren't introduced yesterday. We have friends who are aficionados of slam poetry!"

"Sweet mother of fucking shit, Terezi, no. I think my sponge is dripping out my ears already. I would like to get through this night alive and still in possession of braincells. Is that so much to ask? As if this whole situation wasn't globe-fondlingly stupid enough we now have an alien that spouts barely coherent sentence fragments that almost rhyme. This is hell, and we are dead already. I have been cursed to an eternity with the worst aliens in the universe. I always thought hell would be filled with angels, but no, it's actually unbelievably shitty aliens."

"Bluh. Karkat, shut up!" Terezi laughed. Chyeid was grinning, too, and making a weird, bubbly, ih-ih-ih noise.

"Dayv can speak Alternian, but he shouldn't!" she said. "He only learned the bad words."

"Good words," Dayv intoned. It was impossible to see his eyes through those dark glasses, and the rest of his face wasn't giving away what he was thinking. It occurred to Karkat that the alien's glasses served the same purpose as his own goggles. He still had no idea what caste Dayv belonged to. The pink cast to his skin might indicate red blood, but then Lulond had pinkish skin even though her eyes were purple. There were a lot of hemononymous trolls in the camp for one reason or another, and Karkat treated them the same way he did anyone else. It was different when the one whose rank he didn't know was an adult who might flip out at any moment. Chyeid so far seemed pretty mild-tempered, like most midbloods. Rohs had that air of icy detachment highbloods liked to affect. Dyawn was harder to make sense of. He'd been acting like a complete goof last night, but even Vriska could play friendly when she wanted to. All that was assuming that aliens' castes were anything like trolls'.

The door to the spacecraft slid open. "They came back!" Dyawn said.

"I already said that," Chyeid teased. "Rohs, you were right! Dayv's Alternian is so bad he scared Vantuss."

"Van-tas for fuck's sake, it's not that hard," he snapped. "And I was not scared! It was a sickening experience. If anything I fear for the fate of whatever civilization spawned him, since it's clearly in decline."

Dyawn elbowed Dayv in the side. "Ow, burn." To Karkat's surprise Dayv didn't seem to react to his comment or Dyawn. He probably just hadn't understood what Karkat said, but that didn't explain the lack of response to Dyawn actually poking him in the ribs. Maybe they were moirails?

"I'm glad you two returned," Rohs said. "We thought you to run away."

"Why run when you don't mean us any harm?" Terezi said in a voice dripping with artificial sweetner. "We were hoping you would clarify your terms for us."

"Of course." Rohs spoke to the others. Dayv put his helmet back on and went invisible again. Chyeid went inside the ship and came back with a box, a stack of paper, and a rolled up lump of fabric. She unfurled the fabric on the grass; it was a blanket. "We don't have reclining cushions," Rohs said, "but I think this will work."

Karkat picked his jaw off the ground to speak. "Are you actually suggesting we have a lawnring meal while we talk about alliances? Is that actually a thing that is happening here?"

"I thought was it a good idea," Rohs said. She sat down on the blanket and patted it, inviting them to sit down. "We will not hurt you. We do not have chairs. I thought this is comfortable."

"Which is why Dayv is invisibly guarding us, right."

Rohs smiled. "He is watching your friends." Terezi laughed. It wasn't quite in humor. Karkat felt like it was more that Terezi was acknowledging the alien's challenge. She sat down and pulled Karkat to the ground with her. He spat and squirmed out of her grip even as he grudgingly sat down. He didn't like it, but the aliens had the upper hand and seemed unlikely to yield it. Dyawn plopped down between him and Chyeid. Karkat's hand itched to grab his sickle, but they would probably see it as a threatening action. Instead he clenched his fists into the blanket fabric.

This close the differences between trolls and aliens were more obvious. They moved strangely, like their bones didn’t fit quite the same way. Something about the way Chyeid’s arms twisted screamed wrong wrong wrong. Karkat was certain that would pop a troll’s arm out of its socket. Dyawn and Chyeid were talking quietly in their language. Their faces were strange, still in some ways and too expressive in others. It was like the skin behaved differently, although Karkat wasn’t sure how. He couldn’t help but notice that they leaned towards each other subconsciously, unconcerned about invading each other’s’ personal space.

"You have met everyone?" Rohs asked.

"If you mean four people! You, Egbrt, Arley, and Deiv," Terezi replied. Lulond made an mmm sound. She drew a page out of the pile of papers.

"This might help. It is our ship's orders. Our names and mission."

The page was written in three types of script. On top was a type of writing with lots of simple straight lines arranged in different-sized chunks like words. The second was a solid block of complicated symbols. Karkat couldn't make heads or tails of it. The last block was in Alternian. The language was stilted and highly formal, if technically correct. "Landing craft Skaia-P-393 is ordered to make contact with Alternian enclaves and extend an offer of alliance. The Skaia, under the orders of the Interplanetary Human Alliance, is to act purely as a diplomatic vessel until further notice.” There was a lot of boring legal blather about what counted as diplomacy and when they could act in self-defense which would probably be more interesting to Terezi. At the very end it listed the crew of the landing craft: Associate Xenobiological Researcher Rose Lalonde, Aerospace Engineer Jade Harley, Corporal John Egbert, Private First Class Dave Strider.

"You write it like Jade?" Karkat sounded it out. The J was a variant that he hadn't seen much outside of historical novels. It felt weird on his tongue. He wondered how many names the aliens could have if they only used four letters each. Then again, their second names were different lengths. Maybe those were more personalized?

"Yup!" Egbert said. "Could you write yours?"

"Of course," Terezi said. She took the pen Lalonde offered and scribbled both their names on the paper--with her quirk. She didn't draw their symbols.

"Um. That's numbers," John said. "T-three-R--" Lalonde interrupted him to talk in humanish. He replied with a low moan. Karkat did not want to know what that meant. "Teh-reh-zee Pai-rope and Karr-kaht Van-tass," John said carefully.

"No, there's a trill. Like--" Terezi tried to get him to pronounce her name correctly, but the closest he got was rolling the R. Lalonde and Harley were only a little bit better, but Harley's almost-trill was the closest any of them got. They didn’t even bother trying to get Karkat’s name correct.

"We don't have lower vocal structures," Lalonde explained. "Thank you for indulging with us. What do you wish to know?"

"We had hoped that you would clarify your terms for us," Terezi said. "You say that you want to be allies. That implies that we are helping each other against another threat. It also implies that you expect something from us and will provide something else in return. Right now I'm afraid you have us at a disadvantage! You gave us supplies, but I can't think of what you might want in exchange."

"I think we do have a similar threat. Your Empire kills many children, correct?"

"What happened to 'we defeated the fleet'?" Karkat asked.

"The Fleet is sparse. However, it still exists. The idea of the Empire still exists. The loyal will try enforcing its laws. We do not think children should be killed."

"We're not wigglers," Karkat snapped. "We're almost nine sweeps old! In a few perigees most of us will be adults! Besides, what do you expect them to do with the rejects?"

"Not kill them!" Egbert said. "We do not kill."

"You're a fucking soldier, of course you kill people."

"Not, argh. I killed soldiers, yes. Not people not soldiers!"

"Wow. That was incredibly enlightening."

Harley put a hand on Egbert's shoulder and said something quiet. Lalonde said, "He means we do not kill people who are not enemy soldiers."

Terezi made a considering noise. "So you would like us to be part of your empire instead."

"No. If you want to be, you can. However, that is not the agreement." She sighed heavily. “Our people do not cull. We want to help Alternians from being culled. Improper genetics should not be a… a murder reason.”

"You expect us to believe that?" Karkat said. "You just dropped out of space to help all the sad mutant assholes get out of being culled? Why, so we'd join your fleet? What the hell would you even do with a bunch of mutant trolls anyway?"

"No!" Lalonde was starting to look frustrated. "We do not like the Empire's rules. We do not think mutants should die. We want for you to help us by agree you will not join the Empire. That is all."

"I believe you," Terezi said. "May we take a brief recess and reconvene in a few minutes?" After a pause Lalonde nodded. Terezi grabbed Karkat's wrist and dragged him a few paces away. "Try not to shout for a while."

"Fine," he said in a rough whisper. She rolled her eyes but didn't argue. "What the hell are you thinking? They can't be telling the truth. They have to know we're hiding out here like cluckbeasts shitting ourselves in fear of drones because we're cullbait. If they want us to side with them against the Empire it only makes sense that they'd tell us they won't cull us. Then when they're done with us they'll turn around and say 'Agreement over, we don't need you wasting our resources anymore!'"

"I don't think so," Terezi said. "She was telling the truth. I know they're aliens, but people smell different when they lie. I think they really don't cull mutants." She worried her lower lip with her fangs. Karkat felt a pang of pity in his chest. He wanted to tell her that she wouldn't be culled, she was too smart and deadly and anyone would be mad if they didn't see how useful her weird color-smell powers were. But that wasn't the kind of thing hatefriends said to each other. Besides, he couldn't be sure it was true.

Instead he said, "Well, we don't have to agree to it tonight. The others still have to hear the deal." She nodded.

"Don't interrupt me when we get back. You can keep shouting at them, though. It makes her say what she means."

"Glad I'm useful to you, Legislacerator," Karkat said. "What are you planning to tell her?"

"You'll see! And I thought we agreed I was the Ambassassin?"

"Shit, I forgot. FLARP is already a stupid make-believe murder game, and we're somehow making it worse."

"They're the ones who decided to have interspecies negotiations on a picnic blanket."

"Do you think they know how stupid that is?"

"I think that was the point!" She noticed him scowling and grinned. "They're trying to see if we're going to attack them for no good reason, Karkat. They're probably used to only negotiating with highbloods!"

"Says the girl calling a lawnring meal a 'picnic.'" She had a point though. They went back to the negotiation blanket with slightly higher spirits than before.

"I hope you are well," Lalonde said. Karkat wasn't really sure what that was supposed to mean.

"We agree that you are most likely being honest with us," Terezi said.

"Whe--" Karkat snapped his mouth shut on the word. Terezi had a plan. As batshit insane as she could be, he had to admit that Terezi's plans did tend to work.

"But be aware that justice is swift to repay those who double-cross an ally!"

"I understand, Pyrope." Lalonde was smiling ever so slightly. "I swear we are not lying. We do not cull mutants or the unfirm."

"Who do you cull, then?"

There was a slight shift in the corner of Lalonde's eyes. Were she a troll Karkat would have said Lalonde was enjoying Terezi’s banter. On the human, though, the subtle expression only highlighted how strangely the skin moved over her bones. "The law is different in all places, but most planets only exec- cull murderers and traitors."

"I'm very glad to hear that! You see, I'm actually blind."

What the hell. What the fucking hell was Terezi doing they were going to get culled on the spot holy fuck. Karkat was actually holding his breath so he wouldn't feel tempted to shout, but it was a close thing. Terezi took off her shades. Her eyes were a bright, glossy red all the way through. Her pupils were completely scarred over. Even if they hadn't been, the insides of her eyes were probably burned out as well. Egbert and Harley made humany sounds that were probably surprise, though Harley actually leaned towards Terezi to get a better look.

"What happened?" Harley asked.

"I looked at the sun!" Terezi admitted. "It was a very pretty last sight." She slipped her glasses back on, seemingly satisfied.

"That is a surprise," Lalonde said. She looked like she wanted to ask more, but paused and shuffled through the paper instead. "How did you read this?"

"Smell. It's all fuzzy, but I can see more than I could when I still had eyes!"

"You smelled Dave!" Harley said.

"Dave does smell," Egbert agreed, smiling his stupid hopbeast grin. At that moment Strider appeared, shoved Egbert over, and disappeared. That answered one question that no one had really asked. Much. Okay, Karkat had to admit he was curious about the aliens' quadrants, but only as much as it would affect how they might treat the trolls. The less he had to worry about some alien adult trying to have sloppy interspecies makeouts with the other trolls the better.

"My favorite part about how I've learned to 'see' is that I can smell people's emotions," Terezi continued. "I always know when someone is lying." That got their attention. "So far you seem to be telling the truth! That's the only reason we're still talking to you. I will not hesitate to kill you if you lie to us."

Egbert might not have a firm grasp of the language, but it seemed he had taken note of the tone. He had his right hand on the cylindrical weapon on his belt and sat poised to leap up at a moment's notice. Harley didn't have any weapons, but she was on edge too. For his part, Karkat was tearing holes in the blanket in an attempt to keep from reaching for his sickle. Terezi was being more than threatening enough for both of them.

Only Lalonde seemed unconcerned. "I promise I will not lie to you. By my ancestor’s blood."

"Great! I'm glad we could come to this agreement."

It was only then that the gears clicked into place in Karkat's brain. Terezi was hateflirting with the alien.

"Okay, can we get this crap fest on with?" he snapped. "Point one on the list: no killing. That's a great place to start! What else do you want?"

"Obviously you must agree not to kill humans without reason," Lalonde said. She pulled out a thin pamphlet. Terezi snatched it up and began sniffing vigorously at the paper like she was trying to inhale it.

"'All allied Alternians hereby agree not to harm any humans, unless prompted to do so in self-defense,'" she read. "'Use of force may only be permitted if the Alternian reasonably believes it is necessary to defend him or herself, or a third party, from a belligerent individual. Belligerent here refers to: attempting murder, kidnapping, rape, robbery. Pre-emptive use of force is strictly forbidden.'" She hummed to herself. "What about other grievous harm?"

"What is 'grievous'?"

And so it continued for the next hour, give or take. Terezi read out the humans' proclamations and poked holes wherever she could. Lalonde either explained, made an effort to twist the words without lying, or simply stated that she would contact her superiors about it. Terezi made Karkat take notes since she would end up writing over the text of the pamphlet. Lalonde wrote in plain black, Karkat noticed. He thought that her handwriting was more like the first script on the pamphlets, with chunks of symbols spaced around like words were in Alternian, but it was more looping than the stark typed font. In the end they both had pages covered in notes. For the most part the disagreements were about technicalities, such as what constituted "imminent danger," with only a few issues that seemed to be irreconcilable. What Karkat gathered from it was that humans saw any violence as illegal unless the people in charge were the ones doing it. Revenge cycles were right out, as was killing to defend personal territory. It was bizarre, although Karkat had to admit it wasn't all that different from the rules they had set down in the camp.

"Not that this will dictate what we do in our camp," Terezi had murmured when he pointed that out. "It's just covering troll-human interactions. For all we know the laws in their empire are even less like ours."

At last they reached the end of the pamphlet. "Is that all?" he groaned. "I think my grasping nubs are about to fall off. I can't feel my thumb."

"One other thing," Lalonde said. She put down her pen. "We want to establish a base."

Of course they wouldn't be satisfied with parking up in orbit. "Where?"

Another set of papers came out. This time it was a map--apparently a digital photo of the area they were in. The encampment was helpfully marked with a blue sticker. Karkat hadn't realized that they were located in just one part of a whole set of deep valleys in a vast mountain range. On one side of the mountains were the plains and forests they had fled from. On the other side was the Central Desert. There were other stickers spread across the map, too. There were a few in the desert itself, all red. Inside of the mountain range there was one red sticker and three blue stickers, counting the one that marked their camp. There was a green sticker ten miles away, where the mountains gave way to foothills. Karkat had been there a perigee ago. There was nothing there but trees and rocks. It would make a good outpost, but it wasn't defensible enough for long-term settlement.

"Let me guess," he said, pointing at the green sticker. Lalonde nodded. "Why do you need to have a terrestrial base? Couldn't you take over everything easy enough from orbit?"

"We don't want taking over," she said patiently. "This is for diplomacy." Another explanation that made no sense. Surprise. As far as Karkat understood diplomacy was a way of wresting power with the blood of a few rather than thousands. He got the feeling that the word meant something completely different to her.

"We'll have to confer with our associates," Terezi said. She was having too much fun thinking up words Lalonde didn't know. Leave it to Pyrope to hateflirt over legalistic language bullshit when they were supposed to be negotiating a way to not get killed by aliens.

"That is all we have to discuss," Lalonde said. "Do you want to eat lunch with us? We brought Alternian foods."

Of all the eye-gouging idiocy! She really did want to have a lawnring meal with them. It was too stupid to contemplate.

"No," Karkat said. He grabbed the papers and stood up. "We'll be back tomorrow."

Lalonde smiled. "We look forward to it.”

Chapter Text

The sun was still out.

He was awake, and the sun was still. Fucking. Out.

Karkat felt that he could not stress this point enough.

"If this isn't a dire fucking emergency I swear by Her Imperious Condescension's immaculate ass that I will shove my fist up your wastechute far enough to pull out your tongue," he greeted the troll at the door. They were wearing sunglasses and shrouded with so much sun-resistant cloth and that he almost couldn't tell who it was. Only one horn poked through their hood. It was that one-horned troll... whatever her name was. Scylla? No, that wasn't right, but it didn't really matter right now.

"Apologies. No emergency, just urgent."

He grumbled. "What kind of urgent, watchguard?"

"Someone left the camp during the day. Alone. He returned with bruises and refuses to speak."

The first thing Karkat thought was that someone must have gone off to duel again. It happened occasionally. No fighting allowed in the camp just meant the ones who were really determined went elsewhere. They tended to show up the next night with sunburns and a few new bruises and tried to pretend they'd never been gone. Those had never warranted a personal wake-up call, though.

"You think the aliens did something?" Karkat asked. One-Horn shrugged. "Fuck. Fine. Let me get my coat."

Even with a thick sunproof cloak that Karkat made sure to patch thoroughly, he hated being out in the sun. The first time he had tried to set up a tent himself it had collapsed on one side during the day. He'd woken up with a dark, angry sunburn across his right palm. It wasn't as bad as some pictures he'd seen of sun exposure, but it hurt like nothing he'd ever experienced before: at turns a tight, dry pain and a maddening burn like he'd stuck his hand in an ant nest. He'd had daymares about frying alive for nearly the whole season afterwards. On the way to the main block he kept the cloak wrapped around him like a cocoon. It was hard to walk like that, but at least he was covered. The watchtroll managed to walk as smoothly as though it were midnight.

The troll in question sat in the middle of the main block with another security team member watching over him. He was a redblood, already molted, and much taller than Karkat. There was no blood on his hands or clothes, though he did have a fresh bruise on his face, grass in his hair, and some scratches on his arms. Karkat bet that he'd gotten slammed to the ground pretty hard.

"Hey. What's your name?" Karkat asked. The redblood didn't say anything.

"Adroth," One-Horn answered for him. "Stop being stubborn."

"You know him?"

The guard shook her head. Figured. If the guard had been friends with Adroth, they wouldn't have called Karkat in. He sighed dramatically and glared down at Adroth.

"I don't suppose you're going to tell me what you were doing out there?" Karkat asked. Predictably, Adroth shook his head. Great. Why hadn't they gotten Terezi for this? She could make someone spill their guts without even realizing that's what they were doing. He would have to yell at the guard later. Right now he had to yell at Adroth. He took a seat in Sollux's chair.

"Okay. Since you don't want to tell us what happened, why don't I tell you how my day's been? Do you know what it's like to get woken up in the middle of the day because some grubfisting douche is making life difficult for some idiot trolls who were unlucky enough to get day shift? These sorry tools don't need more to strain their meager logic nodules. They're close enough to sunstroke already.

“I always wonder what goes through someone’s thinksponge when they come up with an idea as stupid as wandering around in the woods in the middle of the day. At least these two have an excuse,” he gestured to the guard trolls. “As far as I know, you just decided ‘what is the absolute most useless thing I could do tonight? Why not waste everyone’s time by running around during the day like a delusional goth who decided Rainbow Drinker Escapades was an actual real thing?’

"Then again, what if you're a rainbow drinker? You probably wouldn't even have thought of how intensely it sucks for the rest of us to have to deal with daylight. If that's the case then there's half a dozen people who would love for you to take day shift."

Adroth stared at Karkat like he was foaming at the mouth.

"I'm trying to think of reasons you would have been out there. I'll take that to mean 'rainbow drinker' is out. Damn, that would have been useful even if it was the stupidest thing I've ever been forced to consider. Did you kill anyone?"

"No!" Oh hey, words. He was finally getting somewhere.

"Then what the hell are you worried about telling us, bulgestain?"

Adroth fidgeted with his shirt like that was going to keep him from talking.

"I guess we could always ask Pyrope to sniff out your trail. Make sure there aren't any dead bodies out there." He honestly didn't think Terezi was capable of smelling trails, for all she acted like a troll sniffhound. Fortunately, Adroth didn't know that. He froze. It was actually kind of funny. Karkat could practically see the wheels slowly turning in Adroth's head, like a long-rusted machine struggling to come back to life.

"I- it wasn't my idea!" said Adroth.

"What wasn't?"

The look on Adroth's face indicated the machine had come to a complete halt and he didn't realize what he'd even said. "N- noth--"

"No, I am not dealing with that shit. What the fuck were you doing out there, Adroth?" Karkat stood up so he could more effectively glare down at Adroth. (It was hard to look threatening sitting down, okay.)

"Th-the aliens! We went to see them. Dy said you guys were s- uh. Sucking up. To them. And we had to make sure they knew we weren't all going to take that, right? And I swear I just went along--"

FUCK. "Of all the absolute BULGE-CHOKING FUCKERY I have ever heard," Karkat growled, "you have officially taken the whimsical sweetened pastry. It is gone, lost down your fucking windhole and out your ass. The idiocy cake can never be taken again. What the fuck were you thinking? Were you thinking? You know you could have just gotten us all fucking killed because you had to go see who had the bigger bulge? Here's a hint: it's usually the ones that actually have a fucking spaceship!"

The blood drained from Adroth's face. "I- I didn't- She said-"

"Who were you with?"

"Dylora!" he actually squeaked. "She told me. I mean. She's the--"

"Fuck, I get it, shut your trap before your sponge entirely dries out." Dylora was a habitual pain in the ass. She’d openly challenged Karkat’s leadership capabilities once and still occasionally made life difficult by doing exactly the opposite of what Karkat suggested. It was almost a relief that he didn't have to go yell at anyone he actually liked. “Almost”, because this was suddenly a Situation, capital S necessary.

When Dylora had made her challenge, Karkat would have been completely justified in killing her. It’s what a real leader would have done. Keeping trouble-makers around only fostered dissent. Instead, Karkat had forced Dylora to surrender. Past-Karkat was, as usual, a monumental failure at having good ideas.

"Tell me exactly what happened. If you leave anything out, I swear to the terrors lurking in the furthest depths of space that you will wish your lusus had never been born to haul your useless self out of the caverns."

Adroth spilled his guts like a wiggler with intestinal disease.

Dylora thought that either the aliens didn't exist at all and it was some elaborate plot (the purpose of which Adroth didn't question), or they did exist but, for some reason, Karkat and Terezi were rolling over like barkbeasts trying to please them. Adroth and Dylora snuck out during the day to find the spaceship. When they arrived there were two humans out. That they could see, Karkat amended. Dylora started off with the stupid threat displays and generally idiotic braggadocio. At some point in the proceedings the humans apparently got fed up.

"Just out of nowhere!" he insisted. "Dylora was just talking and we weren't doing anything! Something hit Dy and I tried to get a hit on it but then I got zapped by like psionics or something. Next thing I know I'm on the ground, I don't even know what happened to Dy. The purple one said we should leave. And, and they weren't gonna negotiate anymore unless we apologized."

Great. This was perfect. Just the thing Karkat needed to start his night.

"You two are, without a doubt, the most grubfucking stupid trolls I have ever known. If we don't all die because of you I might just kill you myself. Fuck! You--" he pointed at the troll who'd been guarding Adroth, "stay here, watch him. You, come with me." The last he said to the one-horned watchtroll. She nodded.

"What now?" she asked.

"First, we're going to get Pyrope. Then we're fixing this even if it means pulling some ridiculous gymnastic stunt that breaks the laws of physics."

---

Terezi didn't have a hive or a tent. Instead she slept beneath the wings of her lusus. Terezi's mom was a massive dragon with eyes as red as Karkat's blood. Her scales were thick enough that the sun didn't bother her. More importantly, she had six-inch long claws and a mouth full of serrated teeth Karkat had once seen snap a troll in half.

That was probably why people chose to wake Karkat rather than Terezi, come to think of it.

The dragon stirred as Karkat and the guardtroll approached. Her tail and wings shifted slightly, and her nostrils flared. She didn't make any move to attack them. Karkat had no idea how good the dragon lusus' memory was, but she always seemed to recognize him. Still, he didn't want to tempt fate by getting too close.

"Terezi, wake up!" he shouted. "We've got an emergency!"

Her lusus's tail lashed.

"Yes, I know, it's the middle of the goddamn day, but this is really fucking important, so WAKE UP!"

The dragon rumbled in annoyance, but Terezi poked her head out from under the lusus's wing. "Do I have to?" She wasn't wearing her glasses, and her hair was a tangled mess. She crinkled her nose like she'd smelled something foul.

"Some nookblisters decided to pick a fight with the aliens. So, yes! We have to make sure they're not going to kill us after all."

"Ughhh." She retreated into the safety of her lusus's shadow. "Go wake up Gamzee. I'll meet you at the gate. Who else is there? Cylarn?"

"Yes," answered the one-horned troll.

"Get up a team for backup."

The watchtroll nodded even though Terezi couldn't possibly see it. "I shall." She left at a brisk pace that was probably half obedience and half eagerness to be away from the dragon.

"Would you mind letting me in on whatever you're planning?" Karkat asked.

"Why did they attack the humans?" Terezi asked. Rolling his eyes, Karkat relayed what Adroth had told him. By the time he was done Terezi was dressed in her day cloak. Her ridiculous red sunglasses looked even more stupid beneath her long hood.

"Here's what I think," she said. "We need to show off! Dylora might be the only one stupid enough to outright challenge the humans, but she won't be the only one who thinks we're acting like we're weak. We have to show people we're not bleatbeasts lining up to be culled."

"I get that. I want to know how you're planning to do that. If it involves murder I will personally skewer you from both ends with your ridiculous swords."

"You'll see!"

Karkat growled. "NO. We are NOT doing that coy 'ha-ha let's keep Karkat out of the loop because it's funny to watch him flip his shit and explaining things is lame' crap. This is too important for that kind of horseshit. For once in your life would you cut out the dumb enigmatic act and join the rest of us in the world where people explain what they're going to do so their friends know when shit has actually hit the whirling device?"

"We don't have time right now," she said. "Get Gamzee. I'll let you know later." She clambered onto her lusus' back. The dragon spread her wings and leapt into the air.

---

The trek through the woods towards the spaceship landing spot was tense enough that Karkat could feel white-hot bile rising in his throat. Gamzee looked like… Well, like a highblood about to snap and kill something. The other trolls weren't too happy either, but they didn't have to actually deal with the humans.

They stopped just short of the clearing. "My bros and sisters," Gamzee said in a low voice, "hold your asses all back here until something up and happens."

"And if this pile of excrement blows up in our faces you get the fuck back to camp," Karkat amended. "Understood?" They confirmed eagerly. No one in their right mind would jump into a fight for people they barely knew.

This time the atmosphere in the clearing was different. There was no one lounging around outside, no half-joking lawnring meal blanket. The ship's door slid open when Karkat and Gamzee stepped out of the tree line. Lalonde and Egbert--and probably an invisible Strider--came out wearing their full suits. Egbert had a hammer at his belt now. Karkat would bet anything that it it used to belong to Adroth.

"Vantas?" Lalonde's voice came out tinny through a speaker. "You--" She jerked her head slightly. "What?"

A shriek like an incoming missile sounded through the woods. Both humans grabbed their weapons. Karkat put a hand on Gamzee's wrist to keep him from going for his own. Egbert started shouting when a shadow passed overhead. It landed with a heavy thud next to Karkat.

"Hello; sorry I'm late!" Terezi crowed from atop her lusus. "I had to feed Mom."

It was really a shame that the humans were wearing their helmets. Karkat would have loved to see their expressions at being faced with a dragon. Even if they didn't know what she was, Terezi's dragon lusus was pretty damn impressive. According to Terezi her lusus was only a juvenile, but she was still longer than the spaceship and loomed far above everyone.

"We want an explanation," Karkat said, "for why one of our people showed up looking like he tossed himself into a scourgifying desiccator and another one is missing."

"Have you asked them?" Lalonde asked. Her voice wasn't as confident as it had been the night before.

"We want your explanation," Karkat growled.

"Invisibro's circlin' us," Gamzee said in a low whisper. Karkat nodded, but didn't respond. He wanted to keep all his attention on Lalonde and Egbert.

"Two Alternians arrived here at eight in the day," Lalonde said. "One called herself Ee-sohld Da-ee-lo-uh. The other did not give a name. We told them the same we told you, regarding an alliance. They requested we aid them against you." Lalonde seemed to be facing Karkat directly, rather than looking towards Terezi or all of them. "They told us we are weak and must do as they say. We requested they leave. One shot a weapon. A... handbow, I think? Dave intersected. John and Dave took their weapons and let them go."

That made a depressing amount of sense. Dylora preferred to use crossbows, and would definitely have taken a shot if she thought the aliens were distracted. "How the fuck did Strider 'intersect'?"

Lalonde unclipped the cylindrical item from her belt. She held it horizontally towards Karkat, her hand flat. He plucked it up. There was a button on one side and writing in an alien language all around it. The top revealed that the item was hollow. Two little metal prongs nestled inside of the cylinder.

"We call it a daysr," Lalonde said. "It is electricity. It will hurt and stun, but does not last long."

"So it's like packaged psionics?"

"Maybe."

He wanted to keep looking over it, or at least keep it for Sollux to poke at. Supposedly some highblood weapons were able to utilize the abilities of psionics without actually needing one around to act as a battery, but this looked like standardized equipment. At least, Karkat thought it did. Reluctantly he handed it back to Lalonde with the same care that she had used.

"If that's up and being the case, how come only one of them motherfuckers showed back up?" Gamzee asked.

"I do not know," Lalonde said. "You are welcome to search our ship. We did not want to harm them."

That sounded completely safe and not at all like a potential trap.

"What way did they go?" Terezi asked. Lalonde and Egbert both pointed in the same direction. Terezi nodded and turned towards the treeline. "Cylarn! Aureal! Track down the suspect and return her to camp! Try not to kill her. She still has to face trial." The undergrowth rustled with the sound of two trolls stalking off in pursuit. "What do you suggest, Scientist Lalonde? According to your terms of agreement, you get to decide how to proceed with the charges."

"Are you agreeing to the alliance?"

"No! I just wanted to know what you would do."

Gamzee snorted a laugh. "No wonder you all take so long getting any real conversating done, what with two chatty broads who won't say what they up and mean." Lalonde seemed to suddenly realize that there were three trolls in the clearing instead of two.

"Forgive me. I do not know your name," she said.

Karkat belatedly did the introductions. "This is Junior Science Officer Rose Lalonde and Soldier Corporal John Egbert," he pointed out each in turn. "The invisible asshole is Soldier Private Dave Strider." Then, for the humans: "This is Gamzee Makara, one of our security team leaders and my moirail."

"Hello!" Egbert said with a wave.

"Pleased to meet you, Mister Makara," Lalonde said. Gamzee fidgeted, obviously uncomfortable with the sudden attention, but at least nodded at them. "I have to ask. Are you wearing that makeup--"

"Hey, no," Karkat interrupted. "You all can have the universe's most nightmare-inducing interspecies makeovers later. We're talking about Dylora and her buddy. What the fuck are we supposed to do to rectify this mess?"

"You did not order them to threaten us, correct?" Lalonde asked.

"Of course not! Do you think we're fucking suicidal?"

"Then you do not need to amend. We appreciate you will disciplan them, however."

Terezi grinned like a cholerbear trap. "Oh, don't worry. They will be thoroughly disciplined. We are very serious about reducing assault!"

Lalonde nodded. "Before you go, please wait here. I will give you something." She didn't wait for a reply before stepping back into the spaceship.

"Well that's not ominous or anything," Karkat grumbled. Terezi slid down from her lusus's back. The dragon adjusted her wings so they were all standing in blessed shade. Egbert’s faceplate went from being opaque to transparent, revealing his ugly alien bucktoothed face. Gamzee visibly tensed up, but he didn't reach for his weapons.

"Egbert. What's Lalonde doing?" Karkat asked.

"I not-- don’t know. In Alternian. It’s a good thing!”

"Is that your weapon?" Terezi asked, pointing out the hammer. Egbert hadn't put it down since Terezi's abrupt arrival.

"Now it is!" he grinned. "The before Alternians had it." Knowing Adroth, he had probably dropped it and run.

"Do you even know how to use it?" Karkat asked.

"Yes! We needed hand weapons to learn. Guns on space ships are bad." He clipped the hammer back on his belt. "You use a sword and, uh, what word, Kaaket?"

Was there no end to the stupid ways these morons were going to mangle his name. "It's called a sickle, nookmunch."

"Ssikulnükmunge," Egbert dutifully garbled. Terezi cracked up. Gamzee even honked out a laugh at that. Egbert stared at him for a moment before grinning and making that stupid bubbly wheezing noise. "A joke! I know what is nük."

"Try pronouncing it right before you claim that," Karkat grumbled. "What the hell is that noise you keep making, anyway? It's like you're about to start frothing blood before spewing your internal organs across your faceplate."

Egbert looked confused. Karkat really needed to remember to use small words around him. To Karkat’s surprise, Gamzee decided to rephrase it.

"What's it mean when you fuckers go all huu-huu?"

“Uhhh. I don’t know the word! Sorry. It is. You do this.” He coughed, then made a strangled set of clicks and creaks that almost sounded like laughter. It was all wrong, though, like some broken mockery of humor. The sound made Karkat’s bones crawl.

“Okay, stop, we get it!” he shouted. Egbert stopped, though he tensed up. “Don’t you ever do that again or so help me I will vomit enough to drown both of us in a sea of bilious spite.”

“Please do not,” Rose interrupted. “I think our superiors might see it to be an attack.” She held out two squarish devices to Karkat and Terezi. It was almost like a scleriphone, but the shell was weirdly smooth. Sollux would probably love to tear it apart. “These phones connect to our ship. Please use them if you want to talk with us.”

It did make a lot more sense than trekking out here in broad daylight, Karkat had to admit. He shoved the phone in his pocket.

“We’ll let you know what happens to those idiots,” he said.

Lalonde smiled. “I look forward to your report.”

---

By the time they got back to camp the sun was beginning to set. Not that Karkat would have had a chance to get any more sleep in even if it was still day. He had to check on Dylora, who had joined her friend in the impromptu jail. Where Adroth had just looked a bit scuffed up, Dylora looked like she had been walloped pretty badly before trying to hide in the woods all day. Karkat almost felt sorry for Dylora when he saw the painful, uneven sunburn on her face. It looked like it was going to start blistering above her eye.

“You two have been charged with insubordination and assault!” Terezi announced. “According to Alternian High Law you should be hanged. Karkat says we’re still not allowed to kill anyone, but grievous injury is still a possibility. What do you think?”

“Motherfuckers don’t really need all the parts of their nuggets, right?” Gamzee mused. Karkat felt a chill up his spine. Probably Gamzee’s freaky highblood mind voodoo. He wanted to shut that down, but it was probably better to freak out Dylora for a while. If he started getting too murder-happy Terezi would do something. Instead, Karkat told the guards to get the word out that there would be a mandatory meeting at midnight, and left.

In the meantime, Karkat found himself at Sollux’s tent. Since most of Sollux’s things were in the central building, he hadn’t bothered asking for a hive of his own yet. In the rare occasions when he was kicked out of his computer corner he retreated here. His tent was falling apart on the right side, obviously in need of some patching to be actually sunproof. He’d painted his symbol on one side in red and the other in blue, back when Terezi still had paints to spare. The colors had faded, leaving behind only faint shadows.

“Sollux, you awake?” Karkat called out. After a moment there was no response, so he shouted louder. He didn’t really care if he woke Sollux’s neighbors. Those assholes could suck his nook for all of the fucks he gave. This was way more important than their sleep. In any case, Sollux didn’t say anything.

Karkat lifted a door-flap and peered in. To absolutely no one’s surprise, Sollux was awake. He was engrossed in something on his husktop, staring so intently that he didn’t even notice Karkat shuffling into his tent. Sollux’s entire existence was a giant Fuck You to natural selection, which had paired a brilliant and ridiculously overpowered psionic brain with the self-preservation instincts of a suicidal rock.

“Sollux.”

No response.

“Sollux fucking Captor.”

Nothing.

Karkat grit his teeth and prayed to whatever deities may or may not exist that he not be annihilated by a surprised psionic in the next few seconds. Then he picked up the computer.

“KK, what the fuck!” Sollux stared up at him.

“Oh, so you were listening! You know, most people actually respond when their friends talk to them. At least a ‘Hi, Karkat.’ Or even ‘Fuck off.’ I’d even appreciate--” the computer floated out of his grasp and back to Sollux. “Hey, that’s cheating!”

“Busy.”

Karkat growled. “I have something important--”

“Nope.”

“Oh, for fuck--” he broke off into a yelp when a stray psionic bolt shocked him. “WHAT the actual FUCK, Sollux? Are you trying to kill me? I--”

“Working on fixing the network gaps that are keeping me from accessing the internet. The comsats aren’t programmed to cover this area, so I’m hijacking them right now. Three down, two to go. Compiling right now on satellite three’s data. They’re stupidly easy to hack, but that just means the code’s a rotten mess. If I hadn’t been kicked out of the building I could use my main system to do this four times faster. Or at least double-check the code and make sure I did it right. Can’t tell until it fucks up and then I have to go through the whole thing again. Shouldn’t have color-coded; always do that, never works, d--”

“SOLLUX, I SWEAR TO FUCK! If you are freaking out right now because we told you to deal with the connections--”

Three of his horns sparked. That was generally not a good sign.

“Fuck, what, no, KK, fuck you. I got this. I am the master code wizard, some half-assed code isn’t going to freak me out. No, I’m better than some shitty wizard because fuck I’m Soll--”

Karkat had had enough. He was tired of dealing with trolls who were fucking dumbasses of a catastrophic caliber, aliens who barely made any goddamn sense, not to mention the omnipresent threat of being culled at any given time. Manic Sollux was officially more than he could deal with at this time. Karkat reached over and snapped Sollux’s husktop closed.

For a brief moment Sollux didn’t even seem to notice. Karkat took the opportunity to lower his head and try to make himself look like less of a target.

“What the FUCK did you just DO?” Sollux shrieked. “I need to finish this!” Sollux grabbed Karkat’s horn and wrenched his head up. Pain shot through Karkat’s skull. His right side hurt and all he could sense was Sollux’s gross dry palm. “Do you have any idea what you just did? You’re such a fucking idiot, holy shit. I need to find her, KK! This is the only way and you just fucked up everything!”

It was hard to think about anything other than ow, pain when he was being jerked around by his horn. Coherent responses to Sollux’s panicked babble were even more difficult. Still, he tried. “Sh- find who?”

“AA! And you just. You ruined it.”

Fuck. This was beyond critical. Sollux needed to calm his fucking tits fast. Karkat knew how to deal with code-binge Sollux and migraine-anger Sollux and self-loathing Sollux, but not desperately-in-need-of-missing-moirail-panic Sollux.

“What would she tell you if she was here?” he asked. The pressure on his horn eased, thank fuck.

“Huh?”

“If Aradia was here, and saw you acting like this, what would she say?”

“I- I- don’t know. That she would help. That I’m, I’m not alone, but I am because she’s not here--”

“Hey, shh,” Karkat thrummed. “You’re not. You have friends here. I’m not going to pap your ass, but if you keep this up I will call Terezi.” Finally, Sollux released his hold.

“Fuck. No, KK, do you have any idea how crappy a moirail she would be? TZ has knives for bones. One pile and you’d bleed to death.”

“Right, like you’re any better. It’s amazing that you can move without any muscle connecting your walk struts. Or do you actually just psionic everywhere?” Sollux was looking a bit better, but not by much. His face was pallid, and behind his shades his eyes didn’t seem to be glowing much. Sparks intermittently trailed up his horns. How could one troll be such a pathetic sack of bones and absolutely infuriating at the same time?

“Get some sleep,” Karkat said. “No, food first, then sleep. When you wake up I’ll let you play with the doohickey the aliens gave us.”

“They what? No fair, KK, let--”

“You giant spazmaggot, I’m not kidding about making Terezi sit on you. Right now you’re just as likely to activate the previously-unknown programming that summons a fleet of orbital annihilators aimed right at our position as you are to shit out some kind of magic alien-to-sense-making code.” He half-expected Sollux to snap at him again, but instead the psionic sagged with exhaustion. Even Sollux probably didn’t even know how many nights he’d been awake.

“Such a fucking asshole, KK, I swear,” he grumbled.

“Yep, I’m the asshole who is keeping you from literally working yourself to death. Without me everyone would assume you were just keeping weird hours until the stink from your bodily waste and rotting corpse started attracting scavengers. You ought to be thanking me for keeping you alive, idiot.”

“Ehehe. I hope that’s not how you sweet-talk your moirail.” Yeah, Sollux was definitely feeling better. He shuffled a little in the direction of his pile. “Get me some of those sour grubs.”

“Not your goddamn lusus,” Karkat grumped, leaving his friend to, hopefully, get some sleep.

----

The food preparation team did, in fact, have sour grubs. Karkat ordered one of the workers to make a meal and bring it to Sollux, then went back to the central building.

He couldn’t help noticing the way that people were huddling together, speaking in furtive whispers that cut short as he approached. A few people openly stared at him. He wanted to scream at them, demand to know what was so interesting. Did they believe that bullshit Dylora had been saying about them bowing to the humans?

The answer came from probably the least welcome and expected corner. Cahill Feynaz’s matesprit Chyurl Dremra sidled up to him with a faint smile playing at the edges of her mouth. She was a greenblood, half a foot taller than Karkat, and had thin horns with a gentle forward curve.

“Good evening, Vantas,” she said. “I understand you had a busy afternoon.”

“Incredibly, I am still busy. Go have a smug-off with Feynaz or something. I have better things to do than listen to you ask questions without actually asking anything and then inferring shit that I never actually said.”

Dremra sighed dramatically. “I just want to help! Cahill said I should talk to you about the ambassador thing--”

“Do you have some kind of ability to pick the absolute worst time to talk to someone? Fuck off and don’t bother getting the fuck back until after the meeting tonight.”

“Well, that is one thing I needed to mention,” she went on, “Cahill started his molt, so he won’t be able to make the meeting. He sends his condolences. In an-- Vantas?”

Karkat stopped cold. Feynaz was a yellowblood. Slightly lower than Sollux, maybe, but not by much. As if he didn’t have enough to deal with, what with aliens and insubordinate asshole trolls and the general idiocy of everyone else in the camp, he had completely forgotten that biology was still a thing that was going on. That would explain why Sollux had been acting even grouchier than usual. Karkat had noted his pallor but thought it just meant Sollux hadn’t been eating and sleeping enough. Pale skin was also a sign of molt--his outer layers of skin were preparing to harden and then slough off. The idiot probably didn’t even realize it. The biggest hint that a troll was about to go into molt was that their irises would fill in with their color. Sollux’s ridiculous mutation meant that his eyes never changed.

If that was the case, it meant that Sollux was going to be out of commission for a few days. It also meant he was going to need a lot of care. Most trolls would have realized what was going on and prepared by eating more and making sure they had enough water. All of the schoolfeeds insisted that trolls cocoon themselves in sopor during molt. Karkat wasn’t really sure what they’d been doing since sopor became impossible to get, but it probably didn’t involve piles of sticks and scrap metal. He had to get back there and make sure-- No. No, he had gotten Sollux water and food and convinced him to sleep. He could check in on him in a little while, but first he had to do this stupid meeting thing. Sollux was a big troll and Karkat was not his moirail.

“Is everything okay?” Dremra asked.

“Yep,” Karkat insisted. “Abso-fuckin-lutely peachy. Get to the point of why you’re making my already awful day that much more wretched.”

She pursed her lips, looking like she might grind her teeth so hard they would snap. “Are you calling me a wretch? I have been nothing but polite--”

“Congratulations, you win the prize for uselessly spouting words that don’t mean anything for today. Why are you talking to me?”

“I, well, Cahill really, thought you might want to know. Most people don’t trust the aliens--”

“They can join the party--”

“--and think you’re going to throw them under the transport vehicle if it gets you a better bargain with the aliens.”

Okay, that was a new one.

“What the fuck. No, why the fucking hell would they think that after I’ve been scrabbling trying to keep all these insipid assholes alive for the past sweep?”

Dremra shrugged. “I’m just letting you know what I heard. And Cahill would appre--”

“Yeah, Feynaz wants credit, whatever. Thanks. For letting me know. I’ll bring it up at the meeting. No one is getting killed, or sold to aliens, or whatever the fuck they think is going on.”

Karkat knocked on the main building’s door to let the others know he was coming in.

“You wouldn’t happen to discuss whether other people--”

He closed the door behind him.

---

Midnight came far too quickly. Everyone had bickered over what to do with the trolls who had attacked the humans, what they should actually say at the meeting, what the meeting meant in the first place; basically everything except whether they should have a goddamn seating chart. No one really agreed on anything. That left Karkat standing at the foot of the lopsided watchtower without a single fucking clue as to what he was going to say.

The whole camp was there. On one frond it looked like a much smaller group than he had expected. Fifty-some-odd trolls huddled together were a little underwhelming compared to the chaotic sprawl he had come accustomed to thinking of. On the secondary frond, this was pretty much the entire camp. Right now they were just talking amongst themselves, but occasionally a couple would look his way, waiting for him to demand their attention.

Sure, he was used to shouting at people. He had probably spoken to everyone in this group at least once. Many of them he knew by name. Talking to people in small numbers or shouting in hopes that someone would fucking listen were completely different types of interaction from giving a goddamn speech. Speeches required people to be charismatic and commanding. While Karkat knew his ability to boss people around was second to none, he also knew that his ability to fuck up in dramatic and unexpected ways was also unmatched. Inevitably he would fumble and say something stupid and contradictory, and--unlike in a romcom--no one would be moved by pity to save the day for him.

“You all right, best bro?” Gamzee asked.

“What? Yeah, I’m fine. Why the fuck wouldn’t I be.” All he had to do was make up something to say on the spot and hope people didn’t think he was selling them out to aliens. Even though the last was unsaid, Gamzee seemed to get it. Or at least he bobbed his head like he was understanding. It was hard to tell with Gamzee sometimes.

“Nothing to it, right? You always know how all to put words in the right way what to make your point get through. Just gotta get up there and let them fresh words flow like the motherfucking miraculous truth up and outta your heart. Ain’t no reason to get your worry on.” He awkwardly patted Karkat’s head just between the horns.

Karkat scowled. “This isn’t some trolling masterpiece crafted especially to decimate the ego of some jackass over the internet. This is an actually-important speech--” He was interrupted when Gamzee slid his bony paws down Karkat’s cheek to cup his jaw. It was a reassuring gesture, but it also ensured that Karkat was looking at Gamzee’s eyes. Even though he still always looked like he was about to fall asleep, the cloudy haze that had accompanied his sopor use was gone. His eyes were bright silver and unwavering.

“You’re gonna do fine, invertebrother.” Even though he followed it up with a honking laugh, Karkat could almost believe Gamzee was telling the truth. Gamzee let him go and gently shoved him towards the watchtower stairs.

Everyone’s attention was on him. Karkat felt his throat dry up. He couldn’t run. There was nothing to fight. He had to get through this. No. He would get through this.

“You all shut the fuck up and listen because I’m not going to be making repeats for the rot-panned bulgebiters in the audience!” Well, if they weren’t listening before, they sure were now. “We need to clear some stuff up about what’s been going on. Yes, the ship that landed the other night is alien. Yes, there are some actual aliens aboard. For some god-awful reason they want to negotiate with us, meaning this conglomeration of the chronically inept instead of any actual adult trolls with rank or power to affect anything. They want to deal with all of us, not just me and Terezi. Don’t ask me why. They’re aliens. They don’t make any goddamn sense and trying to force sense into them is an exercise in ramming your cranial plates against a wall.

“This afternoon some spectacular dumbfucks took it upon themselves to try and threaten the aliens. I’m sure that they followed strict protocol as learned in military cartoons for wigglers. Point is, if the aliens wanted to kill us, they have had time and provocation to do so. Instead they keep insisting they want to make peace with us, so I’m willing to believe them.

"You all know that the team leaders and I have been discussing this stuff. We thought that if team leaders knew everything first hand and told their teams what was going on there wouldn't be any of this speculative bullshit. Clearly that was a terrible idea and we should never have tried because everyone's going to go shithive thinking up stupid things anyway.

“No one has made any deals yet. Pyrope and I have talked with the aliens about what kind of deals we would be willing to make, but that’s it.” And now for the aviating-by-his-ass part. “As I see it, no one can agree on the behalf of everyone. If someone wants to agree to the aliens’ terms, that’s their deal and not anyone else’s. I’m not going to tell you what decision to make.”

Predictably, there was some chatter about that. Karkat heard a couple people that were basically asking “Then what do we do.” Someone shouted “What the hell do they want?” It was too loud to catch everything. "SHUT UP until I'm done!" Karkat bellowed. To his surprise, they actually quieted down. There were still a few people talking, but they'd toned it down to a low murmur.

“Here’s the basics of the deal we’ve worked out: They’ve asked us not to join the Fleet if those assholes actually show up, and to not kill any of the aliens. In exchange they won’t kill us and will protect us from getting culled.” He made a wide, sweeping gesture with his hands. “Congratulations, now you know about as much about alien diplomatic shenanigans as I do! If you’re interested in the specifics, Terezi probably remembers more about that. I don’t really care what you all decide to do, but if anyone is stupid enough to attack the spaceship full of armed adult aliens they had better hope that the aliens give them a merciful death because I will make sure they understand very, very well what hopeless wastes of slurry they are.”

It took a moment for the crowd to realize he was done talking for now. They started to mutter to each other, then talked more and more loudly until it culminated in a question.

“How do you know they’re telling the truth?”

“We aren’t dead yet,” Karkat replied before he could catch himself. “Okay, that’s one reason. They have a lot of reasons to hurt us and haven’t taken any of those opportunities so far.

"Terezi says they probably aren’t lying. Is anyone here a mind-reader?" People looked around, but no one spoke up. "Well, then that's the best we've got." Terezi was probably going to be pissed that he wasn't explicitly hailing her truth-sniffing capabilities, but that was too bad. Not everyone believed she could tell the truth all the time. The ones who'd been on the wrong end of her investigating obsession would get it.

“So if we don’t agree to their terms, you just kick us out the camp?” Dremra said. “It seems you already made up your mind! What if we all want to stay but don’t agree to the aliens’ rules? Will you make us all leave?”

“When the fuck did I say anything like that, Dremra? No one has decided anything. If I kicked out everyone I didn’t like none of you assholes would be here. You all decide what you want to do. We can kick over that river-crossing construction when we get to it.”

She didn’t say anything else, but she did stare at him with a pinched expression that promised more nagging to come. Joy upon joys.

“Do we get to see them?”

That one brought up a lot of excited murmuring. Karkat glared at them. He couldn't imagine that the four aliens would want to risk coming into a camp with a small horde of trolls. They might have superior technology, but they would be completely surrounded.

"I'll ask. Don't treat this like it's some kind of stupid animal ogling experience for your amusement. These are alien adults. They're dangerous, and they're smart." Lalonde and Harley were, at least. The polls were still out on Strider and Egbert.

The crowd slowly dissipated into smaller groups, one centered around Terezi, but most just friends and quadrantmates talking amongst themselves. A good handful kept badgering Karkat with questions--what did they look like, how did they communicate, what kind of signs did they use, was he really, really sure they weren’t going to be murdered in their sleep one day. It started to get exhausting to answer the same questions over and over again.

“If I wake up dead one evening I’ll be sure to let you know!” he snapped at a particularly dense troll. A blur moved in the corner of his eye. Gamzee stood awkwardly to one side, waving to get his attention. “Okay, Q and A is over, get the fuck back to whatever you’re supposed to be doing.” He stomped off, grabbed Gamzee by the arm, and dragged his moirail away. (Not that he could actually drag Gamzee anywhere Gamzee didn’t want to go. Stupid fucking highblood, all scrawny like a featherbeast-deterrent, but somehow stupidly strong.)

“You look like you could use a chance to kick back and chill, motherfucker,” Gamzee said.

“No fucking shit? I have had my fill of hoofbeastshit today. I have been so filled up that it is oozing out of every orifice. If it isn’t--” he stopped. “Fuck. No. I am not having a goddamn pale makeout in the middle of camp. You might be panrotted enough to not care about that kind of stuff but fuck if I’m going to dive head first into depravity too.”

---

Karkat's hive only had one block. He only needed it as a place to sleep and keep his crap. And Gamzee's crap, for the days when he wasn't at Tavros'.

Karkat collapsed onto the pile in a heap of exhaustion. He kicked off his shoes and threw his goggles into a corner of the block. He was vaguely aware that he was draping himself on the top of the pile like something out of a porno, but he was too drained to actually give a shit. He did not have the energy to actually burrow into the pile. He watched Gamzee get his own shoes off so he could join. Tall bastard. His horns nearly grazed the ceiling when he stood up straight. Not that he did very much. Gamzee had a perpetual slouch. Occasionally Karkat would poke at him and grumble about ruining his back.

"Been a long motherfuckin night, ain't--" Gamzee started, but he froze. He stared at Karkat. It wasn't like his normal zoning out. He was staring right at Karkat with bright, focused eyes.

"Uh. Gamzee? You okay?" Karkat sat up. Gamzee shook himself out of it, literally. He looked like a barkbeast shaking off water.

"Sorry, bro. You gimme a sec?" Gamzee started looking around the block for something. Karkat wasn't quite sure whether to be nervous at Gamzee acting weirder than usual or annoyed that after such a long, miserable night Gamzee was doing that cagey mystery thing. Eventually Gamzee found what he was looking for. He settled in the pile and draped an arm behind Karkat's shoulders.

"I think you oughta get your look on," he said. The thing in his hands was a small mirror shard. At first Karkat couldn't see anything unusual. He turned the mirror to catch the light differently. A bit of fumbling around and- oh. Fuck. Fuck his fucking life to goddamn hell.

There was a faint coil of red in his left iris.

Chapter Text

As it turned out, the secret to not dying during molt involved spongebaths.

"Ensuring that the skin is moist at all times" was a more tactful way to say it, but considering that Karkat had spent the last hour dabbing towels on the lump of cracking skin-shell that was formerly Sollux Captor, he didn’t really feel like being tactful. Karkat didn’t remember his adolescent molt being that bad, but he’d had sopor and his lusus back then. If he’d gotten stuck outside the recuperacoon, his custodian would have put him back in. Even as useless as the old crab could be, he did at least manage to keep Karkat alive.

No, no, no. He was not going to think about his lusus right now. There was shit to be done that did not involve being pissed off that that waste of exoskeleton was gone when Karkat needed him. Namely, taking care of Sollux, since that asshole’s lusus was also busy no longer being alive.

"Kaaarkat."

"Busy!" he snapped out. He had to get to the meal preparation crew and pick up supplies, maybe commandeer someone to help him bring them to the main hive. He was also running low on rags that weren’t gross. Reusing the same towels that were already covered in bits of skin couldn’t be healthy.

Something tapped Karkat on the shoulder.

"What the FUCK do you want?" he spat, turning towards the annoyance. It was Terezi. She was frowning at him, head tilted a bit.

"Have you slept since yesterday?" Terezi asked.

"A leader never sleeps," he grumbled. "Are you going to be useless and stand around or are you going to help me?" She shrugged, but kept following him to the meal preparation area. They had some extra food to spare, but the gathering group hadn’t come back yet with the night’s haul so it was mostly wood beetle paste. At least Sollux was too out of it to really complain. Terezi grabbed a jug of water before he could even mention it. It barely took any time at all before the errand was done and they were both back in the central building.

Sollux was awake when they got in. He greeted them with a sad grumble from his pile.

“Good evening, Sollux!” Terezi said, considerably more cheerful. That got Sollux to actually look up.

“Goddamn it, KK, why didn’t you warn me TZ was here?” His lisp was considerably more pronounced right now, and most of his words were a bit slurred. As he got further into molt the outer layers of his skin hardened into a shell that made it difficult for him to move. The shell on his face was thinner but was still enough to mess with his speech.

“What were you going to do, hide deeper in your pile? She’s here to help.” He probably should have warned him anyway. Though Sollux was currently buried in a pile of unreasonably soft things, underneath that he was nearly naked. The last thing Karkat wanted to see was Sollux’s scrawny, pasty ass, but it made it easier to wet down his skin-shell and clean off the dead skin that occasionally sloughed off. In some places the shell would crack and start leaking a thick, yellowish liquid. The pile was going to have to be washed or burned when this was all over. The whole mess made Karkat desperately miss recuperacoons.

“How are you doing under there?” Terezi asked. She dropped the water jug next to Sollux’s pile.

“I’m dying, TZ,” he croaked. “Help.”

“You’d better not be,” Karkat said, “I’m not keeping you hydrated just so you can go die.”

“Is that what all this is for?” Terezi asked, motioning to the rags and water. Karkat nodded.

"I’ve been keeping his shell wet and making sure he gets food and water whenever he’s conscious. Tavros said that he’ll probably have a low fever, and then he’ll be unconscious for a night or two. Then he’ll be perfectly aware but still need help to not die for a few more nights. Of course the asshole had no idea what was going on, and—"

“I get it,” Terezi said, cutting off both Karkat’s rant and Sollux’s peeved exclamation. “I think I can take over for a while!”

What. It took a moment and a very odd look from Terezi for Karkat to realize he was growling.

“Who knew all it took to get you guys to fight over my ass was for it to start peeling off,” Sollux interjected.

“Sollux, fuck you. It’s not—” Karkat shook his head.

Terezi spoke up before he could continue, “Unlike some people I have actually managed to sleep in the last day! At least take a nap, Karkat. I think I can handle a towel for an hour or so.”

“It’s my responsibility,” Karkat argued. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Terezi with Sollux. She had at least a hint of a palecrush on everyone’s favorite self-destructive psionic, and was friends with his moirail. No, Karkat had started this and he was going to see it through to the end.

"I know; I’m not arguing with that," Terezi said. She hesitated for a moment, gnawing on her lower lip. It was hard to read her expression with those shades of hers on, but it looked like her eyebrows were drawn. "I can help take care of him while you supervise. You take it easy for a few minutes while I do the hard work."

“But-”

“Karkat,” Sollux interrupted, “you’re not going to be able to keep me alive if you collapse of exhaustion.”

Fuck. He had a point. Karkat plopped down on a cushion and watched Terezi as she got to work.

——

There was nothing covering him, no sense of where the walls were. Karkat bolted up.

"Good evening, sleepyhead," Terezi said. "You must have really needed that nap." Oh. That was right. He was in the central building. Terezi had offered to take over for a little while and… suggested he take a nap. Wow. He must have been really tired to fall for that. He didn’t even remember falling asleep.

"How long?" he asked, voice crackly with sleep.

Terezi had made a small, gloppy pile of used rags on one side of the room. She had taken off her shades at some point. Her eyes were closed. She didn’t need them to ‘see,’ but it was still always kind of weird when she did that. Her glasses made it look like she was always watching, unblinking. Without them on she looked strangely vulnerable.

“A few hours,” she said. “Sollux fell asleep pretty soon after you did, but he did eat. He’s feeling kind of warm.” Terezi spoke softly. Karkat wasn’t sure if she was worried or just trying not to wake Sollux up. It was hard to get a read on Terezi sometimes.

“Tavros said that was normal,” Karkat said. “His body’s rearranging and having a brain chemical party. He’ll be back to his insomniac self in a couple nights.”

She smiled a bit, but otherwise didn’t respond. Karkat went over to see how she and Sollux were doing. Sollux looked like a mess, as could be expected. The shell of hardened skin made him look like a corpse. His skin was pale and dry. Old chitin on his horns formed a dull, flaking husk. The only indication that Sollux was alive was his slow, shallow breathing. Every time he inhaled the cracks in his shell widened a hair, sometimes leaking yellowish fluid.

Karkat had to look away. He shouldn’t have been seeing this. He wasn’t Sollux’s moirail. But then, she was missing or worse. Karkat wasn’t so crappy a friend that he would let Sollux die while he could do something about it.

"Why can’t we just dump him in a tub of water?" Terezi asked.

"Have you seen a goddamn tub around here recently?"

"Nooo…" Karkat didn’t even have to look to tell she was grinning.

“That hasn’t been funny in two sweeps, Terezi.” Judging from her laughter, she didn’t agree. “It has something to do with too much water messing with the molt juice his body’s making.”

“Gross.” She leaned back against the wall. “Do you think he’ll still be a beanpole?”

Karkat snorted. “If he’s lucky.” The schoolfeeds had been explicit about what could happen if someone was unprepared for molt. If the old skin didn’t shed right he would have scarring at best. If only parts of it wouldn’t come off, his limbs could grow wrong, bones twisted and muscle permanently damaged. The worst case scenario—which wouldn’t happen, because Karkat and Terezi were there to help—was that the shell wouldn’t separate at all and Sollux would suffocate in his own skin. That wasn’t even getting into the things that would go wrong if he didn’t eat enough, or his fever didn’t go down, or a million other things.

“By the way,” Terezi interrupted his thoughts, “we decided what to do about Dylora and Adroth.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

“Me and Gamzee. We decided to go with horn-tipping.”

Karkat gaped at her. “You… cut their horns?”

“Just the tips! It’s an old disciplinary measure for highbloods who were too important to execute.” How could she sound so nonchalant about it? Karkat felt the need to cover up his own horns as if in sympathy. He couldn’t imagine how much that had to hurt.

“That’s not the point! Of all the grisly, fucked up ideas bouncing around both of your skulls, why did you go with that one? What are people going to think if we start cutting people’s horns off because they don’t want to deal with the hornless aliens?” A feeling of nausea hit him in the gut. “You didn’t already do it, did you?”

“No. We wanted to let them wait and think about it for a while.”

That was probably Gamzee’s idea. For once Karkat was glad for his moirail’s sadistic streak. “They can think about it all night for all I care, but you’re not going to actually do it. Think of something different.”

Terezi sighed dramatically. “It’s not like there are many options, Karkat! I have considered every type of punishment for disobeying orders and this is the one that’s least likely to end with them dead.”

“There has to be something better,” Karkat argued. “Cut off part of a finger? Burn the word ‘dumbass’ on their faces? Make them write a thousand words about why they’re complete bulgeknots?”

“If we went with amputation they would get infections. Besides, that punishment is for bribery! Branding was for personal slaves. No one’s done that in centuries.”

“Don’t we have medicine from the humans that would help with the infections?” They couldn’t have used all of it already, could they? It wasn’t a whole lot, but it wasn’t like people were getting major injuries all the time.

“Yeah, but why waste it on them?” Terezi asked.

Karkat scowled. He didn’t want to be easy on Dylora and Adroth. They’d completely ignored the standing rule about trying to kill people. Sure, the “people” were aliens, but it was the principle of the thing. At the same time, he didn’t want them to die for something so stupid.

“We’re not cutting anyone’s horns,” he said. “I don’t care if the alternatives don’t fit your law feeds. Cutting people’s horns off is just going to make them more pissed off.”

“Fine,” Terezi whined. “But only because if we did I’d never hear the end of it.” That was probably the closest he’d get to an admission he’d won the argument.

“Did Dylora say anything about why she decided to go threaten the aliens in the middle of the day?” he asked.

“Not much,” Terezi said. “She started with a predictable story about how she was innocently curious about the aliens when suddenly they pulled shock sticks and swords on her.” Terezi mimed the story dramatically as she told it. “The monstrous aliens almost killed her! It was only her strength and cunning that allowed her to slip past the ninjassaulter’s cruel blade.” She ended with a hand to her forehead as if in a swoon.

Karkat couldn’t help laughing. He didn’t doubt that Dylora was just as melodramatic when she’d told the story.

“Eventually we got her to admit that she did try to make a deal with the aliens, but she wouldn’t admit to trying to kill them.” She let out a sigh. “Then… Gamzee got bored and dialled up his creep aura and I couldn’t get anything out of her.”

Somehow, Karkat really wasn’t surprised. “Well, at least you got something out of it. What the hell was she thinking?”

“Maybe she thought she could get better terms and everyone would make her leader. It didn’t work, anyway.” Terezi shrugged. “So, what happened after the meeting last night?”

"Do you want a detailed list of everything that happened in camp?"

She opened her eyes entirely to roll them at him. “You know what I mean! Why didn’t you want me to help with Sollux?”

"I thought I could handle it by myself, okay?" Karkat crossed his arms. "I was wrong and failed miserably, thank you for reminding me."

"Stop being so dramatic! You didn’t fail at taking care of Sollux. You are failing at taking care of yourself.”

Karkat stared at her. She had to realize that sounded embarrassingly pale. “Terezi, you are not my moirail.”

"No, that—" she cut herself off. "I’m not pale for you! I’m curious. Do you usually fall asleep with your goggles on?"

Fuck. If Terezi noticed—but no, most people wouldn’t realize he was wearing his goggles more. She only noticed because they had been friends for sweeps, and she knew about his mutation. Still, he didn’t exactly want everyone to know he might be going into molt before the next season. On top of everything else that was changing, that would just add more general alarm.

Karkat grabbed a clean towel and dunked it in the jug. “What the fuck does it matter? Stop wagging your talk flaps and help me keep Sollux alive.” But the damage was done. Terezi leaned into his personal space with an enormous grin.

"Can I see?"

"No!" That came out more like a squawk than he’d intended. Karkat turned away from her and busied himself by dabbing water on Sollux’s face. He tried to talk quietly in case someone was eavesdropping. "Even if you could really tell—which you can’t—there’s no way you’re licking my ganderbulbs."

Sollux picked that time to start fumbling awake. He opened a bleary red eye. “Hwuz? AA?”

“No such luck,” Karkat grumbled. “Terezi, why don’t you lick Sollux’s eye?”

“…I wanna be asleep again,” Sollux said. “What the fuck?”

“Karkat’s eyes are coloring in!” Terezi announced like it was nothing. “I just want to look. He’s not being any fun.”

"Fun?” Karkat echoed. “Are you fucking kidding? Terezi, this isn’t some goddamn wiggler game! You are the only one here who has some kind of kink for freak colors."

“And Sollux.”

"Yes, okay, not the point,” Karkat said.

“I platonically hate you both.”

Karkat continued, “The point is that these,” he gestured to his bulky goggles, “are all that’s keeping most of these assholes from culling me! Remember that? You were both there when Gamzee found out and tried to fucking kill me! So much fun, let’s tie up the mutant and let everyone have a whack at him like a party candy corpse. My life is a fucking blast.”

He had expected them to kill him, wounded after fighting raiders away from Tavros’s hive, bright red blood flowing between his fingers for all the world to see. Instead, Tavros patched him up. Terezi had made some joke about candy-colored blood making up for him being so grumpy. Sollux had called him an asshole for making all those mutant jokes about him before, but that was it.

Then Gamzee had woken from his sopor withdrawal daze and nearly cracked Karkat’s head open with a juggling pin.

Terezi relented, sitting down an arm’s length away from him. She didn’t speak for a moment. Karkat wondered if he’d said something wrong and inadvertently pissed her off. Again. It was probably the comment about Gamzee. She hadn’t liked him even in a hatefriendly way before he got off sopor. Since he’d sobered up and gotten over his homicidal withdrawal and sudden-onset highblood psychosis they had nearly been at each other’s throats a few times.

Eventually Terezi said, “I was wondering why he was in such a bad mood tonight. You told him?”

"He told me." She looked actually surprised at that.

“As fun as it is to listen to Karkat complain about how much his life sucks,” Sollux interrupted, “I’m dying of dehydration and my psionics are fucked up. Unless you want water and plastic everywhere someone needs to get me a receptacle.”

Terezi filled a drinking receptacle for him before Karkat could get up. “It’s about midnight, right?” she said. “I can stick around until four if you want to go outside for a while. It would be good to remind everyone that our great leader is still alive.”

Karkat snorted. “Right, I’m amazed that they didn’t descend into rioting without me yelling at them for a few hours.”

"You really are doing a good job, most of the time," Terezi said. Her expression was serious for about half a second. "You’re better at shouting on Trollian, though!"

"Which is why we need to make sure this asshole survives long enough to get the internet working again," Karkat replied.

——

It was a miserable day outside. Heavy grey rainclouds loomed overhead, low enough to swallow up one of the mountaintops normally in view. It almost felt like a ceiling pressing down on him.

He had barely walked two yards from the main building when Nreeve Kathet intercepted him.

"I am so glad I ran into you," she said. “We have a problem.”

For a moment Karkat just glared at her. She was exactly the kind of person he didn’t want to think about right now. Not that it had anything to do with her personally. Nreeve just happened to be a post-molt maroonblood. Her dark red irises were a reminder of what his own eyes wouldn’t look like in a couple weeks. He only wished he was rust and not some freakish animal-bright crimson.

"What now?" he asked. "Did someone fall into a stingbug hive again?” At least that would be a normal sort of frustration.

"No, not this time. The team is, ah. Well, they’re afraid of the aliens. I can’t get anyone to go out very far even in pairs."

At least someone in this camp had a shred of common sense. Incredible. Still, he could see why that was an issue for Nreeve. She had spent hours lecturing to just about everyone in camp about the need to forage in a wide area instead of stripping everything around the camp. They were doing fine for now, but if anything happened to their stores they would be fucked.

"So? Give them your ‘do you want to die a slow and unglamorous death of starvation because you were too lazy to walk half a goddamned mile’ speech again," he said. "It worked fine when they were spooked by that daymonster."

"Yes, yes, I tried. But aliens are completely different from monsters. They’re not convinced that the aliens won’t attack them for no good reason. I know you’re busy, but could you just talk to a few people?" The way she kept shifting on her feet made it clear that she didn’t entirely believe the aliens were safe either. Karkat really, really couldn’t blame her. He was leaning towards the idea that taking their deal might be a slightly better idea than sitting around with his thumbs up his ass waiting for the drones to cull him, but it didn’t mean he really trusted them.

"I’ll see what I can do," he said. "We need to hold another general meeting anyway. I can tell everyone then."

"So soon?"

Karkat nodded. “I don’t know how long the humans are going to give us to decide whether or not to take their deal, but it can’t be much longer. The sooner we can get this over with the better.” The big question was how they were going to decide. Everyone was expecting him to make the decision and force everyone to abide by it. That was how leadership worked. Leaders didn’t make suggestions, or let people choose what they wanted to do. A good leader gave an order and everyone followed it or faced punishment. Instead, Karkat had told everyone they could decide for themselves. Why the hell had he done that? It made him look weak, like he didn’t know what was best. The whole thing was going to devolve into chaos. How the hell were they supposed to decide who was going to stay and what would happen to everyone else?

Nreeve was still fidgeting like she had something to say but was too nervous to get it out. “Oh, okay. I’ll let everyone know then.”

She turned to leave, but Karkat stopped her. “How do you think this is going to go?” he asked.

"Huh? You’re asking me?" Nreeve stared at him like he had just said the sun was cold. It was downright weird to see an adult, or near-adult, look so hesitant. She twitched a bit at a loud crash of thunder.

"Why the fuck not. You seem generally sane and you’ve spoken to people more the last couple of nights than I have. I’ve been hanging out with a troll who’s in the middle of molt fever. So yes, I am asking you."

She looked a bit confused, but she did at least think about it for a moment. “It’s, well. Everyone’s scared. I mean, aliens, you know? They sound more trollish than the ones in movies, but they’re still just aliens. How do we know they even really understand negotiation? Do they think it’s making words and then eating us anyway?” She was getting less fidgety as she talked and more animated. “We don’t really know anything about them except, well, they claim that the Empress is dead. Anyone can say things.” Still, she lowered her voice when she said it like a drone was about to jump out at her for implying the Empress could even be killed. “When it comes down to it. Uh. There are a lot of lowbloods, mutants, and cripples here.”

Karkat fought the urge to fiddle with his goggles. “So? We’ve got a lot of unlucky grubsuckers who lost the genetic lottery. That doesn’t mean they’re going to go one way or another.”

Nreeve shrugged. “I mean, I can’t talk for anyone else. But if the drones came tomorrow, Issi wouldn’t make it. She doesn’t have a kismesis and her matesprit is ship-battery material. And. I know it’s selfish, but I don’t want that.”

Karkat found himself nodding. It was selfish. Moirails were important, of course, but not having one wasn’t a culling offense. If she died her concupiscent quadrants would also be doomed. There were thousands of classic stories in which the protagonist’s concupiscent quadrants ended happily, but only after a tragic subplot involving a moirail who couldn’t get their own quadrants worked out. Only a few involved moirails dying for each other, and those tended to be about the folly of love. Karkat didn’t want to think about Gamzee dying for his sake. Gamzee’s pan was rotted full of holes from sopor, but he couldn’t be that dumb, right?

"You’re going with the humans, then?" he asked.

"I think so. It’s not much, but it’s a chance." She gave him a small, sad smile. "If nothing else, it’s a more interesting way to go than ‘culled by drones.’"

“So is waving your bulge at an angry cholerbear,” Karkat argued. “Anyway, thanks. Let everyone know we’ll be meeting at five. That should give people time to think it over.”

It was only after leaving Nreeve that he realized he hadn’t actually eaten in… well, a while. It was after lunch so the culinary block, if you could even call it that, was technically closed. There were only a few other trolls there. Most of the meal preparation team was out getting food about now.

Karkat initially only meant to make food for himself (and maybe Terezi, as a thanks for watching Sollux). In a few minutes he found himself directing the meager meal preparation crew in the proper way to make a stew out of random leftover material without the grubs getting too gooey or the vegetation too tough. How they had gotten to nine sweeps old without learning how to cook toothworms, he would never know. One of the slackjawed assbrains thought you could eat the damn things raw. That was a good way to end up shitting your guts out for three solid nights before literally shitting your guts out and dying a miserable and embarrassing death. Hadn’t their lusii taught them anything? Karkat ended up putting a brownblood named Oruthe on cleaning duty for complete inability to handle a cooking platter without catching his own food on fire. It was almost impressive in a failure at life kind of way.

It was relaxing to yell at the meal prep team about something as simple as cooking worms. They were being dumber than a beefgrub without its head, sure, but in a way that was familiar and easy to deal with. He railed at their idiocy for a couple minutes, then led them in preparing the food correctly. Everyone listened and did their work, each person fully committed to their own part while doing what they could to help the others. The troll doing the sorting helped the one cutting up the ingredients, who helped stoke the fire for Karkat occasionally. No arguments, no whining. It was complicated enough that he had to focus on what was going on in the meal preparation block instead of what was going on in his head, but simple enough that it wasn’t a new set of bullshit to deal with.

By the time they were done with the first couple batches people started trickling in, realizing that the commotion at the meal preparation block meant the possibility of warm food. The brief moment of peace was gone all too soon.

"Vantas, might I have a moment?" Chyurl Dremra asked.

"Shouldn’t you be taking care of Feynaz?" All the difficult parts of the meal preparation were done, so he could really have left already. He just didn’t want to get into another passive-aggressive gripefest with Dremra. She was way better at that kind of hoofbeastshit than he was.

"That’s what his moirail’s for. Oh, wait, you’re taking care of that psionic, right?"

"Captor," he answered. That psionic made it sound like she was talking about a battery.

"Right. I didn’t realize you were—"

"Oh, fuck off, Dremra, I just don’t want him to die. That doesn’t mean I’m quadranted to the egomaniacal nooklick. His moirail’s terrifying when she’s pissed off." It wasn’t really a lie. Aradia was way too happy when it came to inflicting murder on people. True, she rarely did it outside of FLARP, but that didn’t mean Karkat wanted to risk getting on her bad side. That was, if she was still alive. "Did you want something, or are you just here to make my night miserable?"

"I wanted to let you know that I will agree to the aliens’ terms. And I can help convince other people who are on the fence about it."

That was surprisingly helpful. Karkat wondered what she wanted in exchange. He wasn’t dumb enough to ask her outright, though. “Thanks. You know we’re having a meeting tonight?”

She smiled like the very picture of innocence. “But of course. I’m looking forward to actually talking to the aliens. I was studying to be a colonial manager, you know. I probably know more about aliens than anyone else here.”

Oh, so that was what she had been trying to get at for the last few nights. Karkat honestly didn’t know what colonial managers did except paperwork. It made sense that they would have to know something about aliens, but he didn’t see how it was useful here. A conquered planet was bound to be a lot different from a species that was still a credible threat.

"That’s nice. I used to want to be the Grand Threshecutioner when I was a wiggler. Why are we having this jaunt down memory lane?" If she was hinting that Karkat needed to let her show off her supposed expertise before she would help him, she really needed to come out and say so.

Dremra rolled her eyes like he was the dense one here. “If I can talk to them, I can help you figure out how to deal with them. I really do want to help out. I know you and Cahill don’t get along, but I’m not him.” She raised her hands, palms out, towards him. It was a gesture that usually meant that the speaker had nothing more to say or was surrendering the argument. “Please, may I speak with the humans the next time you meet with them?”

As much as he hated to admit it even to himself, she had a bit of a point. Not about Karkat disliking her because he couldn’t stand Feynaz. She was just as smug, if not more so, because she actually had some sponge in her thinkpan. But neither he nor Terezi really knew anything about aliens. Karkat hadn’t even seen them in movies very much—the ones that involved aliens tended to be action films with more explosions than lines of dialogue and nary a convincing romantic plot to be found. The only movie aliens he could really even recall offhand were from In Which a Midblood Aviatrooper Is Stranded on a Hostile Alien World and Must Find His Way Back to the Hive Ship, Becomes Moirails with a Yellowblood Techniculler Who Largely Functions as Comic Relief, Features Numerous Fight Scenes, Aliens which Are Unusually Competent But Ultimately Eliminated, One Highly Improbable Use of an Alien Computer et cetera. Karkat had only watched that one because it had Whille Samith in it. Those aliens were nothing like the humans—they were squids with a telepathic hive mind, which made them easy pickings for the flaysquads.

"I’ll talk to Terezi about it," he conceded. "If we do end up working with them, you’ll get to talk to them sooner or later anyway."

A scowl crossed Dremra’s face for a brief second, but she was quick to replace it with a plastic smile. “Of course. I understand you feel the need to ask Pyrope for her legal opinion before making any decisions.” Karkat wasn’t sure how, but he got the feeling that was supposed to be an insult.

One of the trolls walking by stopped roughly a yard and a half away from both of them—a respectful distance, but close enough to show that they wanted to get someone’s attention. It was that one-horned troll Cylarn.

Dremra acknowledged her first. “Mirell, how are you doing today?”

"You busy?" Cylarn spoke in a near-monotone, just barely hitting the right tones for her meaning to get across. Dremra, on the other frond, reacted like she’d been physically hit. She jolted her head back before frowning—no, pouting.

"Well, I was in the middle of a conversation! You didn’t even ask Vantas—"

"Ronach’s tent. ‘Scuse us, Vantas."

Karkat responded, “Not that I mind being spared from more of Dremra’s pleading, but what’s going on?” He could practically feel the daggers Dremra glared at him.

"Ash date," Cylarn answered. Oh. Well. Karkat waved them both off. If anyone was insufferable enough to need an auspistice, it was Dremra. How she could have gotten into an ash relationship after only being here a season, while he—

He could mourn the bleak outlook of his quadrants later. Now he had to let Terezi know that someone else wanted a turn with the aliens, and figure out what to do about the meeting.

——

An hour later, Karkat was feeling a bit better about the meeting. He’d talked to Terezi, who acted like she had expected something like this to happen. Then she kicked him out “before he spent another full night lususing over Sollux” with barely a thanks for the soup.

After Nreeve spread the word about the meeting, people came up to him with their concerns. Issimi Anaxes’ matesprit Staada had asked him whether the humans used psionics to power their ships, and Karkat had to admit he had no idea. He wasn’t an engineliminator by any stretch of the imagination, but he didn’t think space travel was possible without psionics. A few trolls skirted around the question, but only one person came out and asked Karkat if he thought the aliens were going to enslave them. The question still infuriated him. What kind of troll did they think he was to put all this effort into keeping them alive just to turn around and let some alien assholes treat them like animals? He railed at the idea long and loud enough to draw a crowd. Hopefully they would go tell whoever was spreading that bullshit rumor to shut their goddamn word trap before it turned into a load gaper.

Karkat hadn’t seen hide nor tangled hair of Gamzee all night. He hadn’t been avoiding Gamzee intentionally, not really. It was just that the last night had been a complete disaster. Karkat had freaked out when he saw that his eye color was changing. He’d started rambling and stormed out to busy himself with Sollux, leaving Gamzee alone. Karkat still really didn’t want to talk about it. At first he had been glad Gamzee seemed to be giving him some space. As the night wore on, he wasn’t so sure. What if Gamzee was avoiding him because he thought Karkat was angry at him? Karkat hadn’t exactly said why he was ending their date early.

Tavros was near the bug pen, as could be expected. He was supervising a couple other trolls who were picking their way through the enclosure. With Tavros watching, the beefgrubs wouldn’t hurt anyone, but it was always good to be careful. The grubs’ backs were as high as the average troll was tall, and they had nearly four times the mass, massive goring horns, and terrible eyesight. It was a good thing they were edible and had useful sunproof shells.

“Karkat, hi,” Tavros said. “Do you, uh, need anything?”

"Do you know where Gamzee is?"

Tavros frowned. “If I did, not that I do, uh, why do you need to know?” Karkat fought the urge to roll his eyes. It was almost overwhelming.

"To talk with him. Is that okay with you? Do I have your permission to talk to my moirail?"

“He is my matesprit, too,” Tavros argued. “And he was really upset last night.”

"Which is why I need to talk to him," Karkat growled, biting his tongue on a choice chain of insults.

Tavros patted one of the grubs on its mandible before spinning his wheeled-device around to face Karkat. The action was a not-so-subtle reminder that no matter how much of a pushover Tavros could be, he was a hell of a lot stronger than Karkat. He couldn’t imagine having to push the damn thing across the grass and dirt all day, let alone do acrobatic stunts.

“I know I shouldn’t be, butting in between you two,” Tavros said with only a hint of a waver in his voice, “but Gamzee’s been doing better. And last night he, uh, wasn’t. Then you were taking care of Sollux. I don’t think you want to hurt him, but, uh.”

If he gritted his teeth any harder Karkat was going to crack his jaw. “Do you seriously think I’m cheating on him? No, really, is that what you’re saying? By the time you finish a complete sentence I’ve forgotten where you started. I’m not sure whether to be pissed off that you think I’m cheating on that pitiful wreck or so fucking bored of listening to you that it’s making me angry.” His mouth had taken no time in running ahead of him with broken brakes, careening toward the cliff of awkward public conversations without a care in the world. He had seriously just called Gamzee pitiful in public.

Karkat felt a flush rising in his cheeks. Shit. He closed his eyes and tried breathing slowly. Tavros knew about his blood, but other people might be watching. It didn’t help that worrying about what would happen if he didn’t calm down only made him less calm.

“That was, really not necessary,” Tavros grumbled. “But, uh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Gamzee was in my hive, earlier.”

Karkat took a second longer to respond. “Sure, thanks.” He had a goal in mind now: get to Tavros’ hive. He could focus on that and not worry about flipping his shit.

"Can you please, uh, not have a jam session in my hive? I would really prefer that that didn’t happen."

"Thank you for the reminder that I am such a disgusting mudbeast that I was looking forward to wallowing in someone else’s pile. I wouldn’t want to miss a chance to roll around in animal skin and fiduspawn crap." He absolutely was not going to think about what Tavros and Gamzee probably did on that pile. The idea of his moirail engaging in concupiscent behavior was nauseating enough. He sure as fuck didn’t want to imagine Tavros of all people anywhere near a bucket oh god why couldn’t he murder his own brain.

“That’s not, uh—”

"I’ll let him know you said hi," Karkat snapped before stalking off.

——

The door to Tavros’s hive had his symbol crudely carved into it. Karkat knocked on the middle of the circle for almost a solid minute before the door edged open. Gamzee’s stupid clown face peered out through the crack.

"Hey there, brother. Everything up and being all right?"

"Of course it’s not, you sponge-oozing moron. I’m a failure of galactic proportions, spreading ruin to all I touch like a gigantic acidic asshole leaking across the universe."

"I’m sure you ain’t gone and done nothing—"

"Yes, I fucking have; now shut up while I give you the gift of my apologies," Karkat snapped. Gamzee looked confused, but that was hardly new. "Can I come in?" So much for not having a feelings jam in Tavros’s hive. Karkat felt the words lodged in his throat like they were going to spew out at any second. Tavros would just have to put up with Karkat getting conciliatory all over his hive.

Gamzee wordlessly let Karkat in and shut the door behind him. God, he was pathetic. Gamzee hunched in on himself so that he looked maybe half the size he really was. His bony arms were drawn in, spine and shoulders arched, head so far down that Karkat could easily have grabbed his horns. He made for the world’s most dejected skeleton.

"Best friend, I wasn’t meaning to h—"

"I’m sorry I ran off," Karkat interrupted. “I shouldn’t have freaked out and left you alone like the most feculent, gangrenous bulgesore in all of history. I didn’t leave because I was angry with you. I’m glad you told me! I would have freaked out even worse if I found out on my own, and it would probably have been in some embarrassing fashion in the middle of the entire camp."

Gamzee’s mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. His fingers twitched like he wanted to reach out to Karkat. Instead he let Karkat keep talking.

"I wasn’t thinking and overreacted and I’m sorry that I’m a failure of a moirail. I just don’t need this on my nutrition platter; the damn thing is full already with a million other bullshit servings. Why the hell couldn’t my freakish genetics have gotten this over with already? It’s—" Karkat broke off before he started going on about all his complaints about his mutation. That was exactly the thing he didn’t want to talk about, damn it. Gamzee raised a hand, but dropped it rather than trying to pap Karkat.

"It’s all right, bro," Gamzee said. "I didn’t do much all to help. Can’t blame you for not wanting to get your talk on at me." He had a positively miserable look on his face beneath that smiling clown paint.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Karkat asked. “Of course you can. You’re not the one who did anything wrong.”

Gamzee wouldn’t look at him. “I saw that miracle and something up in my pan all went and decided it’ll be better as paint than all making your pusher go as it should. Didn’t matter what that you’re my best motherfucking bro. All’s was in my nugget’s a need to tear until that inside is out and flowing through my righteous reachnubs. I woulda ended the best thing the prophets ever up and decided to make just ‘cause my thinknodes got all murderhappy.”

God fucking damn it. This was the exact opposite of what Karkat wanted to happen. Still, Karkat couldn’t just stand and watch Gamzee pour his diamond out. Karkat reached out and stroked one of Gamzee’s horns. Karkat shooshed softly until Gamzee stopped rambling about his murder fantasies.

"You were just being a highblood," Karkat reassured him. "I’m a mutated freak of nature who should have been culled before I managed to hatch. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what was going to happen."

A distraught warble escaped Gamzee’s throat. “I don’t want to be motherfucking gonna rain that kind of darknasty rage at you again!”

"Then fucking don’t," Karkat said. His voice was stern, but there was a hint of a conciliatory chir rising from his chest. "I talked you down when you were trying to kill me, remember? I won’t let you go into rampaging deathclown mode again. You so much as look like you’re about to go off and I will pap your ass all the way back to last sweep. You got it?"

Gamzee nodded so hard he whacked Karkat with his horns. Karkat couldn’t really bring himself to be angry. Instead he just hugged his bony idiot clown.

"I pity you so much," Karkat mumbled into Gamzee’s hair. By all rights Gamzee was a fucking noble, so highblooded that only seadwellers could order him around. Instead of gleefully murdering Karkat, Gamzee was purring in his arms. Unlikely as it seemed, the only explanation Karkat had for it was true serendipity.

——

An hour before the full camp meeting was scheduled to begin, the team leaders gathered for one last discussion. The main building had been cleaned up so there was no hint of soggy rags or Sollux’s pile. Sollux himself was dressed and conscious, though he didn’t look too happy about it. The other trolls kept trying to avoid looking like they were eyeing his pale, cracking skin and glossed-over horns, but they weren’t nearly as discreet as they seemed to think.

"How are we going to do this?" Karkat started the conversation. "Whoever has the most people gets to stay? That’s not an idiotic idea that’s going to end in bloodshed or anything. It’s been hard enough getting people to move their tents long enough to build hives. Like hell are they going to be fine with packing up and moving because other people don’t agree with them."

"Does anyone here, uh, not want to take the deal?" Tavros asked. None of the seven sitting around the circle said anything, though they all looked around as if expecting someone to speak up.

"Well then!" Terezi said. "That solves it. If they don’t want to follow our decision, they can leave."

"I already told everyone we’re not making the decision for them," Karkat said. "All that would accomplish is pissing everyone off. Not everyone is going to be as ready to gleefully ignore the part where this is high fucking treason! We won’t just get culled for this. We’ll get tied to a flogging jut and tortured for nights on end while the whole thing is broadcast across the Empire and recorded to teach future nooksuckers exactly what an incredibly rot-panned idea it is. Everyone we know will be killed just in case it turns out that our particular form of blinding stupidity is contagious. Terezi, you of all people here should know this shit! Isn’t there anything in your stupid law feeds about this, or did they figure that it was such a horrible idea that they didn’t even need to make laws about it?"

"I don’t think anyone’s used a flogging jut for a few hundred sweeps, Karkat," Terezi said. "Besides, you are missing a vital point! Treason is a crime against the Empress. If the Empress is dead, we can’t be committing treason."

"That is the stupidest goddamn thing I have ever heard. I think my brain cells died trying to process what you just said. Let’s all pretend that sentence never happened because that is the most useless technicality to base a life or death decision on."

"More a death or death decision," Sollux croaked. “KK, would you stop licking the Empire’s bulge for once?”

"Oh, go fuck yourself with all of your leaking appendages. I’m trying to be reasonable about all of this. We can’t expect that everyone’s going to agree to go skipping off to join the aliens just because some of the people they know are cullbait. Everyone knows that their social circle is likely to be slaughtered by Ascension. The Lalonde human said herself that the Fleet isn’t gone, so it will come back eventually. Even if the Empress is gone—which is an ‘if’ the size of Tavros’ oversized satellite dish horns—there’s still the Heiress. Unless she really did get herself killed somehow, she’s technically the Empress as soon as Her Condescension kicks the bucket. And none of that is even the actual goddamn point, which is to figure out what to do with the trolls out there depending on the outcome of this absurd vote for your life scenario!"

In a perfect world, everyone would politely sit down and consider what Karkat had just said before replying. The conversation would resume with comments about how he was making valid points that they really ought to address.

Instead, he had barely finished talking when Nreeve replied, “Oh, voting! Why not just do that?”

"Because voting is for internet polls and wiggler games!" Karkat shouted. "You might as well toss a bunch of FLARPing dice to make a decision!"

"It’s better than nothing," Nreeve replied with a shrug.

"I concur," said Terezi. "Everyone gets to say what they want to do and we don’t have to worry about leaving."

"Am I really the only person who thinks this is a terrible idea?" Karkat asked. A few people nodded (Terezi most vehemently).

Gamzee bumped his shoulder and said, “C’mon, bro, ain’t no use getting your worry on right yet. Sky won’t up and fall at your nug just when the words fall off your maw.” He had a point. Why did he have to have an actual point buried somewhere in that clown blather? Karkat wanted to keep yelling about how stupid this was out of pure stubbornness, but he decided to heed his moirail’s advice.

"Fine! We’ll let everyone vote on an actually important issue like it’s the goddamned Troll Choice Awards. What are we going to do afterwards?"

"I told the security team that we’ll need to be on alert in case people decide to fight the decision," Terezi said. "With all due respect, Mister Makara, I would appreciate if you did not act in support unless things get out of hand."

"Better not let any hands loose, then," Gamzee replied, his voice much more tense than it had been a moment ago.

One night, Karkat decided, he was seriously going to have to ask Gamzee whether they needed an auspistice. It didn’t have anything to do with the old hatecrush he’d had on Terezi—that was dead and buried three sweeps past because it was a stupid idea he never should have considered. It was just a pain in the ass to watch them awkwardly blackflirting when they were supposed to be getting work done.

"If anyone needs supplies to leave, Nreeve and I can get some packs set up," Anaxes announced. "We can’t spare much from storage, but we can give them enough to not die the first day out."

"Good," Karkat said. "I want to see the records of that. Make sure you note who got what, too." He didn’t really need to tell Anaxes how to keep records. She was better at organizing them than he would ever be. The rest of the meeting was bureaucratic busywork that everyone already knew to do. It was pointless and boring, but it was sort of reassuring. As soon as they walked out that door everything was likely to fall apart. For now, though, they had a plan.

——

The crowd seemed even smaller today. Karkat wasn’t sure what to make of it. Some of the missing people might be going through molt, sure. That didn’t explain why trolls were missing who Karkat knew had already gone through molt or had seasons to go.

"Hey, Anaxes. You mind doing a head count?" She nodded and started looking over the crowd.

"What’s wrong?" asked Terezi.

"Might be nothing," he said. The more he looked, though, the more certain he was that some very specific people weren’t there.

"Thirty-two?" Anaxes said. "That can’t be right. There aren’t that many yellowbloods in camp. I know a few people are on guard duty, but…”

"We’re missing about ten people," Karkat said. "And I don’t see Adroth or Dylora. Are they still sulking in their tents?"

Issimi shrugged. “I’ll go check around,” she said before slipping away.

The crowd was already getting a little restless. Karkat couldn’t make out what they were whispering to each other, but they seemed to be just as agitated as yesterday. There was no help for it. He was just going to have to get to the point. Karkat climbed up on the lopsided wall.

"We decided the best way to determine what to do is to take a vote! How many people here absolutely will not take the aliens’ deal?" Karkat shouted. There was some muttering. A few people hesitantly half-raised their hands and then dropped them back down. Only two people fully raised their hands and kept them up.

"What’s going on?" Terezi whispered behind him.

"I don’t know, but I really don’t like it," Karkat grumbled. He knew there were more trolls who weren’t happy with the idea of working with aliens. There were also about ten trolls who hadn’t shown up to the mandatory meeting. That was one hell of a coincidence. "Two people voting against?" he said, louder, so everyone could hear. "We’re missing some people. If any of you know where they are you had better let me know."

At that point Anaxes ran back in and whispered something to Terezi. Before she could tell Karkat what was going on, one of the people who had voted against the deal spoke up. It was a brownblood named Sanyon who usually worked on the construction team.

"You’re all traitors!" he shouted. "Dylora should have fucking gutted you!"

This was suddenly going about as well as Karkat had expected. The trolls near Sanyon took a few steps away from him and looked like they were about to go for their weapons.

"Do you know where she went?" Terezi asked. Anaxes must not have found Dylora. Surprise.

"Like I’d tell you if I did," Sanyon said. "What’re you going to do, kick me out? You’re all spineless." He looked directly at Karkat as if trying to stare him down. Fucking idiot.

Karkat flexed his fingers just above the hilt of his sickle. Sanyon had an axe in one hand, the kind that you could throw. Sanyon was already molted and had a good few inches of height on Karkat, not to mention a lot more muscle. There was a chance he wouldn’t be used to fighting with that increased mass yet and Karkat could get him off balance. On the other hand, the throwing weapon probably meant he was psychic or something.

“Yeah, we’re spineless,” Karkat retorted. “That’s why Dylora left you here to carry her messages instead of sticking around long enough to say it herself. Feel free to fuck off and resume kissing her ass.” Karkat couldn’t really blame Dylora. If their positions were reversed he would have been one of the first to run. Then again, Dylora would have actually killed the people who disagreed with her.

Sanyon put his axe back on his belt. “Better than kissing yours. I hope you have fun getting culled.” The crowd parted to let him pass, followed by the other troll who had voted against the deal.

"Okay!" Karkat felt like breathing a sigh of relief and collapsing into a pile, but he still had this horde of trolls to deal with. "In that case, we’re going to contact the humans and tell them we’ll take their deal. Since a bunch of people left, we’re going to need to switch up team rosters a bit. Make sure you report in to let your team leaders know you’re still here. We’ll let you know what the aliens are planning as soon as we know. Security team needs to report to Pyrope right now. Everyone else, go back to whatever you were doing."

He stepped down from the wall. With Terezi busy finding out where the other trolls had wandered off to, he was going to have to make the call.

Chapter Text

Other trolls managed to drag themselves out of their holes earlier than usual, eager to catch a glimpse of real live aliens. Some uselessly parked themselves behind the wall, but at least a few managed to help out with the nutrition block, took up guard, or tried to make the little gate look presentable. It was a wasted effort, but at least they tried. 

The humans arrived just barely after true dusk. They were all wearing their helmets. They were also wearing what were obviously weapons. Harley had a rifle strapped to her back, Egbert had what looked like an actual warhammer, and Strider had his sword. Even Lalonde had what looked like a small pistol hanging off her hip in addition to the usual daysr. They weren't huge, compared to some adult trolls, but they were definitely soldiers. The way they held themselves belied some kind of training, or at least practice. Lalond kept to the front, Egbert and Harley flanked her, and Strider took up the rear. They were on high alert. Was it possible they were expecting an ambush? Karkat didn't know whether to laugh or cry. So he did the Leaderly thing, which was neither.

"Greetings!" Lalond announced when they were ten feet from the gate. "We are the emissaries from the space-hive Skaia, with a treaty for your village." 

That was as good a cue as any. Karkat waved to the rustblood who was in charge of the gate. With a crackle of psionics, he lifted the stone gate up long enough for Karkat and Terezi to scramble through. It fell behind them with a heavy thud. Okay, so it wasn't really a gate so much as it was a section of wall. It was close enough. 

"Good evening, Emissary Lalonde!" Terezi said. "We are prepared to read and sign your final treaty." 

Lalonde held out a roll of paper. It was surprisingly thin. Karkat prayed that it wasn't in ocular globe-blistering tiny text as he took it from her. Instead of paper, it felt like plastic. The words were in a reasonably-sized font, and as he moved his fingers over the page the words scrolled up and down like on a computer. 

Terezi leaned over and sniffed at it. She frowned when she realized it wasn’t something she was allowed to lick. “Mister Grumpy Grey, would you be so kind as to read the document for the court? Many a legislaturator has been brought to her knees by fine print.”

“Fine,” Karkat grumbled. He read the agreement loud enough that the people behind the wall could hear him. The text was the same as they’d gone over the other night. It was filled with legal terms that Lalonde probably didn’t even understand, and Karkat himself only barely did from sweeps of listening to Terezi babble on. Terezi occasionally smirked at a bit, so those must have been edited after she and Lalonde argued semantics, but Karkat honestly couldn’t tell the difference. It went into detail about what exactly counted as murder and espionage and what specific materials the aliens could provide all the way down to defining what the word “food” meant. The main point of it was all still the same: Don’t kill us or help the Fleet and we will help you not die. When they had finished reading it aloud, Karkat and Terezi both drew their signs on the bottom of the "page."

"Alright, that's it! Obnoxious ceremony time is over! You can all go back to fondling your bulgesacks now!" Karkat shouted back over the wall. A few curious heads were now poking out from behind it, and they were decidedly not going anywhere. Karkat grumbled to himself. Of course no one would listen to him when he was trying to prove to the aliens that everything was fine and dandy. 

"Can we see what they look like?" one of the trolls behind the wall shouted. Karkat glanced nervously at the humans. That was up to them. Thankfully, Lalonde was in a charitable mood. She undid the zips and snaps that kept her helmet on and removed it. Behind the wall, a host of trolls gasped and murmured in surprise. Lalonde smiled ever so slightly at the reaction. Aliens. 

"If you have any other questions, I would be happy to provide answers," she said in the too-sweet tone of a seadweller aiming to pull you underwater and feed you to their lusus. For a moment nothing happened. Then there was some scrabbling behind the wall as, of all trolls, Dremra climbed up. 

"Greetings, emissaries," she said, "I am Chyurl Dremra, greenblood, and I would like to ask a few questions about your species." 

"This is going to be fantastic and not at all horrendously awkward," Karkat grumbled. A few feet away he could hear Strider muttering something that was probably along the same line of thought. Lalonde just smiled even more. Of course, she was an Alien Bioweaponizer or whatever they called it.

"I will tell you what I know."

The questions were unsurprisingly technical and boring. Dremra seemed to be working off a checklist she memorized. Since humans are trolloid, did they evolve similarly? No, instead of mangrove marshes and social hives they came from pack hunting tree-dwellers. At least that explained the gross way their arms worked. Were they primarily carnivores then? No, they were omnivorous and could survive on only plants if they had to. Again: weird and alien. What kind of strategy did they belong to? An alien one that didn't translate well. Karkat was getting bored, and he was certain that most of the crowd was, too. 

"Dremra, that's enough," he interrupted. "You can tortuously dissect the aliens' pans with boring questions later. Let someone else talk."

"Just one more question, please," she said. "Is your species eusocial or egg-laying?" Karkat wanted to argue that that was two questions, whatever the first word meant. Whatever it was, it got Lalonde to laugh, showing off stumpy human teeth. 

"No, to both questions," she said. For once, she didn't elaborate. Maybe she was just as annoyed with the questions as he was. Karkat doubted it. Whatever that meant, it was probably some gross alien biological thing that she didn't want to talk about right now. Maybe they were parasites. That would be just the thing to get this happy camp of chute globs off to a wonderful start.

Thankfully Dremra stepped down. A rustblood named Malaca took her place. He had long horns that curved tightly around his head, like a circlet. "What do your helmsblocks look like?" he said, looking almost bored as he asked the question. Karkat winced. He knew this was going to get out of hand. But at the same time, that was the point. This stupid question and answer session was a chance to see what happened when the humans got questions they didn't like - without it all falling on his or Terezi's heads. It was cowardly, and if it hadn't been Terezi's idea Karkat wouldn't have seriously considered the thought for more than a second. Still, he watched carefully to see what Lalonde's reaction was. 

Her reaction was to blink at the question for a moment, like she was translating it over in her head. Then she pursed her lips in a scowl. "We do not have... helm blocks. We don't have psi-onics." 
"Hoofbeast shit," Malaca said. "How do you expect us to believe you have spaceships if you don't have psionics?"

Psionics were the main reason that the Alternian Empire had flourished among the stars. Karkat remembered that much from his history schoolfeeds. Other, lesser species could only go through space in near-light speed, so they took dozens of sweeps to reach the closest star. With psionics it only took a number of minutes. By the time any aliens could mount up a defense that would even threaten a scout pack, the Fleet could be alerted and take over their planet.

"Oh, I know!" said Harley. She waved her hands excitedly. "We use quondam mechanistic principles to esti- esteemate paths between two places and make temporary holes in space! It's all math and energy. Once a small object travels to the new place, it makes a stable hole."

Trolls muttered amongst each other. Karkat wished Sollux was awake. He at least would know whether any of the words the human was babbling out made any sense. Karkat had passed his mathematics feeds, but it was basic rustblood stuff. Astrophysics were for people whose lifespans measured more than a few dozen sweeps.

"If you would like," Lalonde interjected, "I can ask for a better translation from our superiors."
"Yeah. Sure," Malaca grumbled as he stepped down from the impromptu hollering platform. "Hope they can talk better than wigglers." 

No sooner had he walked away than a new idiot showed up. Karkat recognized him but couldn't remember his name. It was that idiot brownblood who'd caused the beefgrubs to stampede the other day. It took all of Karkat's self control to bite his tongue - not hard enough to bleed, but just barely - and not rip the dumbass off the wall. 

"Hey! My name is Kynval! Uh, Oruthe. Kynval Oruthe. Sorry!" He waved his hands wildly while he talked, like he was having some kind of fit. 

"Hello, Kynval," Lalonde said evenly. 

"So. Um. How did you kill the Empress?"

Both sides of the wall fell silent. For a few long moments no one so much as took a breath. It was so quiet that you could practically hear a leaf falling on soft grub shit. 

The moment was broken when Lalonde closed her eyes and held up a hand. She spoke in Human to Egbert. He handed her a small cube. Lalonde pressed a button, and the ground in front of them changed. Instead of an empty space of dirt and sticks, there were hundreds of tiny ships. Karkat backed up and reached for his sickle, but Lalonde put her hand right through one.

"This is a recording," she said. "Please observe."

As she spoke a large, familiar red ship appeared to one side. Her Imperious Condescension's flagship, the Battleship Condescension, floated into the "scene." It dwarfed the hundreds of tiny silvery spaceships. After another moment, the rest of the Fleet started to arrive. There were just as many black-hulled troll ships as there were silvery human ones. 

It was impossible to say who made the first attack. Ships darted back and forth, popping in and out of space, tossing psionics and metal slugs and mysterious alien weapons. One slightly larger human ship fell to a swarm of troll ships that latched onto it and simply tore it apart. A handful of troll ships were pierced straight through by human weapons. Above it all loomed the Battleship, silent and unmoving. Until it exploded.

The center of the ship seemed to collapse in on itself before the rest of the ship burst outward like so much shrapnel. It devastated the human and troll ships alike. When the debris cleared, only half of each fleet was left. The battle slowed down to a crawl until the troll ships started simply disappearing. 

By the end of the recording, almost everyone in the camp had clambered up the wall to watch. Trolls stared wide-eyed and disbelieving at the human ships, which were now fading out. 

"How is that even possible?" Karkat found himself saying. 

"I do not know," Lalonde admitted. "I know rumors. Some say we had spies, some say it was a new weapon. It happened. She is dead."

No one else came up to ask questions. After a couple minutes even Lalonde seemed to get uncomfortable, glancing back at Egbert every so often. Karkat was about to put an end to question time with hornless assholes when she spoke up.

"We have some supplies in our ship. If you will permit an hour, we can bring them here."

Terezi stepped up with a polite, if shaken, smile. "We would welcome any supplies you could spare, Emissary Lalonde! Thank you for your time."

"Alright, the rest of you assholes!" Karkat shouted. "Showtime is over! Get back to whatever the hell you're supposed to be doing or by the fucking horrorterrors' collective insanity I will force you to do it, no matter how much it pains both of us!" 

It took a few minutes and a lot more shouting before everyone dispersed. Then Karkat got to work. Someone had to sort this place out before the humans started to really poke their sniffnodes in things.

----------
Two hours later there was a nice, small passage between the gate and the central hive. Karkat and a few others had bullied people into moving and cleaning up the ground so the area would look at least a little presentable. It was amazing how much trash a frond-ful of trolls could accumulate in their tents in a few perigees. The good thing was, a few new spots had cleared up recently since ten trolls had abandoned their camp. Sure, they had to worry about those same trolls ambushing them or trying to sabotage their supplies, but that was something Gamzee insisted could be dealt with "some other motherfucking night." For now Karkat had his fronds full directing where people should put their tents. 

A squawkbeast lusus screeched three times: the signal that the humans were on their way. Half of the camp dropped what they were doing. Karkat shouted at one troll who had been in the middle of putting her tent together, and she reluctantly went back to nailing the stakes in place. He followed the rest of the crowd to the entrance. Malaca was hovering the gate stone while the humans came in carrying at least two large boxes each. That ridiculous blueblood Egbert was carrying three. There was scrawling alien writing on them with smaller print in Alternian. "Food rations," "Medicine," "Water purifier," and "Suncloth" were just the boxes he could see. Karkat couldn't help gaping at it. 

As soon as the humans put the boxes down, Anaxes and her team of organizers swarmed over it. They had handheld writing planks that were soon covered in notes detailing what the supplies were, how much of each they had, all that boring logistics drivel that was vital to their continued survival. Karkat had never particularly wanted to get involved in that, and still didn't, but he couldn't help but feel impressed by how quickly they got things done. 

While Anaxes' team was busy with the supplies, Lalonde walked up to Karkat and Terezi with Strider by her side. Or at least, watching her back. "Hello. Would you mind if we look around?" she asked. 

"What the hell for?" Karkat asked. He waved a hand around. "This is about all there is to see. It's a bunch of tents and shitty hives."

Lalonde nodded. "Yes. I, however, would like to see personally. You need supplies. We need to know how many." 

Terezi laughed and knocked Karkat's shoulder with her cane's head. "Have fun playing lusus. I'm going to make sure no one tries to sneak off with our new supplies." She stepped closer to the boxes and stood over the assembled trolls like a serpent waiting to strike on anyone who stepped out of line. It was probably just as much to prevent people from bothering the humans as it was to keep the supplies safe.

"Okay, fine!" Karkat said. "Come on, let's get this inane alien scrutiny time tour on with." 

Most of the other trolls stayed at a respectful distance from the human adults, though they did stare. Karkat led the two humans through the maze of tents.

"These are made from whatever people managed to salvage from their hives," he explained. "We don't have a lot of sunproof material we can spare, so they end up getting patched a lot."

As if to emphasize the point, Strider poked his sword--sheathed, thank fuck--at a gaping hole in one maroon tent. "Fuckin' danger lʊk," he babbled.

"Yes, congratulations, it is dangerous! Why do you think I'm pointing it out?" Karkat snapped. It was extremely weird to hear that kind of language out of a human. The others had been sticking to wiggler language, or, in Lalonde's case, sounding like a broken thesaurus.

Lalonde asked, "You see sunburn often?"

"No shit. It's the biggest problem other than food. We can't exactly raid any nearby hives for new materials. All we have is what people brought here."

"How many... sorry, small hives?" Lalonde asked, gesturing at a tent. 

"Tents. We have about twenty people in tents."

The small row of hives was near the back of the camp. Karkat brought the humans over there to have a look at the ramshackle little buildings. Lalonde nodded along, making notes on her weird paper-computer. 

"Which is yours?" she asked after a few minutes. Karkat pointed his out. Lalonde's eyes widened - not much, but enough to be noticeable. "The symbol... what is it?"

"It's mine?" Karkat said. What else would it be? "Do you not know how name symbols work?"

"I do not know that one," Lalonde admitted. "There are many." Beside her Strider huffed and drawled something in Human. Lalonde murmured something back, but kept her eyes on the hive. Then she apparently decided to change the subject. "I notice many lowblood adults here. Is it molt season?"

"Sure, I guess. They're not really adults, they're just past their adult molt." Nobody's chitin was dark enough to be a real adult, even the maroonbloods who'd molted perigees ago. It would be sweeps before the highbloods even started molting.

"How do you care for them?" 

Karkat explained the basic process he'd figured out from helping Sollux. Lalonde kept taking notes. She asked him how hives were usually set up, and again he answered as best he could. It was somewhat difficult with only a couple shitty hovels put together for demonstration. At least Tavros' hive had more than one room. Karkat's was one room that was barely larger than his regalia trunk in his old hive. Thankfully after a while she seemed to run out of questions, and even Strider with his opaque helmet was looking bored.

"I have a question for you," Karkat said. "How long did the war with your species last?"

Lalonde paused for a moment, eyes distant in thought. "Around... twenty sweeps? Brother, what do you think?"

"Seventeen i eight perigee, around. sʌmwʌnd ken jəɹ shit ət mæθ, Rose," Strider said. It took a moment for Karkat's pan to catch up and realize that Lalonde had just called Strider brother. Wow. Either she didn't know what that meant, or they were a lot closer than he'd thought. He was suddenly bursting with questions that were completely inappropriate to ask a couple of adult aliens. Were they just bros? Was she using the term like a clown cultist would? What if they were in quadrants? What the hell would they even be? Lalonde seemed like the usual highblood stereotype of a manipulative eel in the sea, whispering kind words and waiting to strike. But what the hell was Strider? He seemed more like a laughsassin, but without the religion. Then again, he was an alien. Who knew what their cults would be like?

He was so distracted by the musing on the aliens' quadrants, of all things, that Karkat must have spaced out. The next thing he noticed was a hand in his face. He reacted like any sane troll would: by blocking with the blunt outer edge of his scythe. He was rewarded with a startled "aʊtʃ" as Strider snatched his hand back. Karkat froze. 

"Shit. Shit! Are you okay? I didn't-" Karkat babbled, looking wide-eyed from one human to another. The trolls around them seemed to have frozen, too, waiting for the aliens' wrath to descend upon him. 

To his relief, Strider shrugged in that unnerving liquid way that humans did. "jɛə̯, shi, I'm o-kay, no need worry around," Strider said, then continued babbling in incomprehensible Human moan-noises. 

Lalonde gave off a twittering human laugh. "You surprised him! I did not think that should - would happen." 

"You do this kɔz I'm less good troll, Rose. Why hate, you wɝst sis." It was hard to read his reaction without any facial expression, but Karkat thought he looked a little defensive. 

"Wait, shut your gibbering word holes for a moment," Karkat demanded. "You just said 'troll.' Why is it the idiot who can barely string a sentence together without melting my thinkpan out of my hear ducts is the only one who can say the word 'troll?' Why the fuck do the rest of you keep calling us Alternian?"

"It is... a bad word in old ɛnɡəls," Lalonde said, softly. "It means monster."

Karkat didn't know how to respond to that. On the one hand, who fucking cared what some old angul word was? On the other, now that he knew what it meant to them, he knew he would feel self-conscious about it if they used it. He glared first at Lalonde, then at Strider.

Strider didn't feel like shutting up, though. "O, fuck off, Rose. ðeɪ kɔl ðəmsɛlvz ðæt. aɪv tɔːkt tu mɔɹ -"

"Dave, we will talk later. You are not allowed to talk. Remember?"

Strider's posture communicated that he was not done talking, but he didn't say anything. Instead, he made a gesture with his hands where one finger was extended on each hand. It prompted Lalonde to roll her eyes and say something sharp in Human to him. Then he went back to standing at attention, for all the worlds a perfect soldier.

Aliens, Karkat decided once more, were fucking bugnuts. 

"Is that why you don't let the idiot talk? Because you know he's going to call us trolls? Which we fucking are; it's stupid to apply your moany word sounds to us. If 'human' meant 'disgustingly infected secretions dripping from a necrotic bonebulge' in Alternian I'd still call you that, because that's what you fucking said you were!"

"I'm sure," Lalonde commented, lips twitching up in a smirk. "I have training in the Alternian language. Dave learned from less... savory ways. We do not really understand some words he 'knows,'" she explained, even going so far as to make enclosure talons with her fingers. "It is safer if he does not talk." With a sidelong glance at Strider, she concluded, "You are not missing anything."

Strider babbled something, but Karkat ignored it and spoke over him. "Wow, thank you, I was on the edge of my sitting platform just waiting to know what the hemoanonymous tool was saying."

Lalonde frowned. "Hemo-anon... What does that mean? The ones who attacked our camp called you that."

Of course they did. Nevermind that nearly a fifth of the camp was anonymous for one reason or another. More of them would be if not for the fact that they'd molted already. "Hemoanonymous. When you think your blood color isn't anyone else's fucking business."

"I see. And 'blood trai-tor'?"

Karkat couldn't help how wide his eyes went at that. They had called him a blood traitor? What hideously ironic world had he just stepped into? A mutant was being accused of being a blood traitor, what the everloving fuck. They must have assumed he was a greenblood or something since he hadn't molted yet. The universe would never tire of ways to fuck with him, would it? "Traitor is when you betray your own side. Kind of how we're doing now, I guess!" he admitted. "It's an old term; you mostly see it in historical novels from before the Empire was unified and the castes were more distinct."

Instead of commenting on it, Lalonde hummed. "What caste do you think Dave is?"

"How the fuck would I know? You're all adults and that's the whole point of being hemoanonymous!" 

"I see." She said something to Strider, who tightened his grip on his sword. With obvious hesitance, he drew it and pointed the blade in Lalonde's direction. She removed the glove from her suit, then reached out and touched the blade to her palm.

Bright, candy red bloomed from her skin.

Lalonde held her hand up in the air, mutant red blood dripping from her palm to her wrist. "Know this!" she said loudly, looking over the stunned crowd, "Humans do not have caste! We do not care about caste! We will help anyone in need!" 

It felt like the world went silent, time stopping entirely. The only movement was the blood dripping down Lalonde's arm. That hideous, vivid red blood. Faster than eyes could see, Strider stepped in front of Lalonde with his sword in a defensive position. She seemed completely unconcerned by the danger, content to make eye contact with as many sickened trolls as possible. Karkat's eyes could hardly leave the sight of alien blood. It was insane. It was impossible. How could anything with blood like that be such a threat to trolls? How could he have mistaken her for a purpleblood, of all things?

Lalonde's hand finally dropped. The gesture seemed to break the spell the rest of the trolls were under. Most of them fled the area. Karkat alone felt frozen to the spot. 

"Might we continue?" Lalonde asked. Strider swore in a string of broken Alternian and Human.  Air finally returned to Karkat's lungs. He was glad for his stupid goggles; they couldn't see that he was still looking at the blood. Still, Lalonde smiled as if she knew what he was thinking. 

"Fine. Fuck you for that stunt, by the way. Just for that we're going to the beefgrub pen," he snapped, trying to sound more frustrated than shocked. As Lalonde's smile widened, he knew he was not successful.

--------------

When the humans and Karkat rounded back to the front of the camp with the rest of the humans, Egbert was the first one to notice anything wrong. He jumped up with his hammer ready, babbling in Human. 

"Do not worry," Lalonde said placidly. "I did this. I would, however, like to wash it." 

The humans argued with her in a variety of whines and moaning. Egbert actually grabbed her hand and started cleaning it with a small towel from a supply kit. Karkat wanted to complain, but he had just had proof that humans are weirder and crazier than he gave them credit for. Instead he sidled up to Terezi and Gamzee, who were watching the whole mess with a mixture of shock and curiosity.

"Karkat, is that cherry red I smell?" Terezi asked, softly. 

"The Lalonde human stabbed herself," he hissed back. "Then she made some idiotic speech about humans not having castes and wanting to be everybody's lusus. They are insane."

"Motherfucking miraculous, more like," Gamzee rumbled. He was staring at Lalonde's cut hand like it was the most amazing thing in the world. "Homies come all the way out of space with miracles in their pushers." 

"Don't start with miracles, you pan-rotten clown," Karkat grumbled. 

After Egbert finished wrapping up Lalonde's hand - they had to be moirails, Karkat was sure - she finally looked back at Karkat and Terezi. 

"I am sorry to leave so fast," she said, "but I need to check this. You likely need to talk with your people."

No shit. Everyone was going to have a million questions that Karkat had no clue how to answer. "Yeah, fine, let us do all the hard work of explaining what the fuck some alien was thinking by stabbing themselves in front of a dozen trolls. It's not like I have no idea how your species survived if you're so blatantly flirting with death." Lalonde smiled. 

"Thank you," she said as if it was a compliment. "We will call to tell you when supplies will arrive." 

Egbert said something sharp in Human, and the small group turned and went back into the woods. They faded from view quickly, swallowed up by the dense green plants. It took barely a moment longer for the sound of footsteps to disappear. 
It took less than a minute for everyone else in the camp to drop what they had been doing and swarm Karkat. 

"Was their blood really red?"

"Why would they do that?"

"What if the drones come?"

"Everyone, SHUT UP!" Karkat shouted so loudly that his blatherpipe hurt. "I don't know. They're aliens! We can't expect them to act like rational trolls, or even apparently have a real blood color!" His eyes swept the crowd, looking for - yep, there she was. "Dremra, did you learn anything useful from that boring as hell interrogation you made us all sit through earlier?"

The greenblood stepped up with a hint of smug satisfaction in her smile. "Of course. What would you like to know?"

"Anything!"

"Well, based on their evolutionary history and apparent technology they are probably a Type Teal-Alpha species. The color has nothing to do with their color, of course -"

Before she could get on a frustratingly jargon-heavy tangent, Cylarn came up from behind her and gave her a thwack on her horn. "I'm not auspistizing between you and the world, Chyurl. Just say what the important things are."

Dremra huffed. "They're likely aliens that have tight bonds between genetically related groups, like barkbeasts do. These kinds of aliens are highly social. We've had success in training some Teal-Alpha species to recognize trolls as part of their pack hierarchy. The ones that don't accept the training invariably have to be eliminated because they see all trolls as a threat. Which, to be fair, we are, but it's wasteful to destroy a potentially useful species."

"These brothers could bash our insides all to the outsides any time they wanted," Gamzee said. "Instead they want us to up and join their barkbeast pack?"

"Maybe," Dremra said with a shrug. "They do seem smarter than the Cu Si, though. Maybe they think they can make us bond with them? Trolls don't work like that, since our primary loyalties are to the Empress and our quadrants. Anyway, about the blood thing, it's not that surprising. Roughly half of alien species have red blood. Most of the others either have blue or clear blood. Trolls are the only creatures with the Hemospectrum, which is... well." Dremra's face went sour. Karkat hadn't heard that information, but he could guess what the line was supposed to be. Which is why we are destined to rule. There were so many lines like that strewn throughout schoolfeeding, movies, everything. Psionics proved that trolls were destined to take over the stars. The longevity of tyrian blood proved that its owners were inherently fit to rule. The emotional complexity of quadrants proved that trolls were superior to things like barkbeasts that bonded to their littermates. 

Apparently they had been wrong. Maybe not in everything, but in enough ways. 

"Thank you," Karkat said. He might have been an asshole, but Dremra had done what he'd asked. "Everybody else, start packing these supplies in the storage caves! For all we know it's going to start raining after midnight!"

-----------
The rain didn't start until a couple hours before dawn. Everything that Karkat had to do that night got done, no thanks to the humans interrupting everything with their signing ceremony and crazy stab-happy touristry. There was enough food in storage to last two perigees, well into the dark season when everything would start to get scarce. It was funny, in a way. Karkat used to like dark season, because the sun never coming up meant less chance of accidentally getting boiled alive if he went to someone else's hive or forgot to close the curtains one morning. Even with a rustblood's rations, he had never bothered to scrounge for plant food. Crabdad was always insistent on hunting himself, and Karkat didn't really mind letting him. So it had never occurred to him just how much the food supply depended on sunlight. He wasn't a complete wiggler: he knew that plants needed sun, and animals ate plants. It just didn't seem as relevant when his primary foods were processed crap that had probably been harvested perigees ago. Now he was having to budget food rations for an entire horde of trolls, and it depended a lot on when food was available in the first place.

He had fled from his hive two dark seasons ago. Sollux had already been at Karkat's hive when bands of trolls started to move in and loot everything. The cities had turned into riot zones long before the suburbs. Sollux had managed to salvage his husktop and a few bees before flying off to Karkat's hive, but that was about it. Originally the plan was to head to Aradia's. Her place was further out, almost where the lowblood suburbs started to edge into the midblood communities. Only, Aradia wasn't there when they got to her hive. It was already long-empty.

Without any other ideas, they had made it to Terezi's treehive. That had lasted for all of half a perigee before everyone was at each others' throats. Before anything could come of it, though, some of Terezi's neighbors decided to attack. They knew she was blind. They knew that something was going terribly wrong to make all the lowbloods riot and flee the cities. Only Terezi's ridiculous dragon lusus - which Karkat hadn't actually believed existed until it swooped down and grabbed all three of them in its talons - saved them from being skewered by another tealblood's glaive. 

At some point the trio found Gamzee and Tavros hanging out in a poorly constructed tent somewhere in the woods. Gamzee was already out of his mind with sopor withdrawal, but Tavros was able to keep a lid on it. At least for a little while. Then came the day when Karkat had gotten injured.

He shook himself out of it. There wasn't any point in thinking about the past that much. He opened the door to the central block; the last of his chores for the day.

He expected to see a lump of flesh and calculated blood huddled in the corner. Sollux had stopped speaking at some point the previous night and the fluid seeping through his hardened skin had formed some sort of horrific cocoon around him. Instead, there were now shards of yellow gunk around the pile they had left for Sollux. The pile itself was abandoned. Karkat had a moment of panic before he noticed the tall black figure looming in the other corner of the block.

Sollux looked mostly the same. He was still skinny as a pole, with two sets of horns and that unnerving bicolor stare. The first difference was his skin: he was considerably darker than a juvenile. Still not the pitch black of a full adult, but enough to make Karkat's spine crawl. Then there was his height. Sollux had to be at least six and a half feet tall. It was kind of short for an adult, but he towered over Karkat even while slouching. It looked like he had finally grown into his fangs, at least. 

Karkat realized he had been gawping for a good minute. "H-hey. How are you feeling?"

"Like I got tossed through a thresher and put my limbs back together bit by bit out of sheer spite," Sollux said. His lisp was mostly gone. Karkat could still hear it, but for the most part it was barely noticeable. Instead his voice had deepened as his squawk bladder got bigger. Sollux might not have looked like a full adult, but he sounded like it enough to put Karkat on edge.

"Do you- are you hungry?"

"Sure." Sollux's voice was flippant, but as soon as food was mentioned he stared at Karkat with the kind of intensity that was usually reserved for irritating bits of code. Thankfully Karkat had planned for this. He handed Sollux a couple plastic-wrapped packages that the humans claimed were enough for a full meal each. Sollux didn't even check to see what they were; he just tore them apart and started shoving food in his mouth. It was utterly disgusting and absolutely something he could imagine Sollux doing, the asshole.

"Don't you need to breathe?" Karkat asked, partly awed and partly disturbed. "Or are you going to keep shoving food down your nutrient shaft until you turn into a seadweller? You know those are supposed to be one full platter each, right? I think you're supposed to put water in that one, actually. It looks like something my lusus would have hacked up."

"KK, do not ruin this for me," Sollux growled. His resonance bladder echoed with each word. It made Karkat want to run and hide, but he stayed where he was. "I feel like I haven't eaten in sweeps." 

"Fine, I will attempt to hold my stomach contents in while you gnaw at the dehydrated remains of alien food. I hope you're fucking happy." Then he covered his mouth with his hand and continued to glare at Sollux. For his part, Sollux didn't seem to give a shit. He even licked the packaging once he had eaten all the actual food. Gross. 

"Is that all? I'm fucking starving," Sollux whined. 

"That's all I could grab from the human supplies without Anaxes making a stink," Karkat admitted. "Is it that bad?"

Sollux made an odd rumbling sound that wasn't quite a growl, but didn't sound good either. "I just grew like a foot in three nights, no shit I'm hungry. My head is killing me." It took another moment for him to realize what Karkat had just said. "Wait, human supplies?"

"Yeah. We made a deal with them," Karkat admitted. "They gave us food and stuff, and we promised not to kill them."

"Shit. That's a big deal."

"What the fuck else were we going to do?" Karkat asked. "Oh no, we don't want extra supplies, and also we feel completely okay with attacking some crazy alien adults? What would that accomplish?"

"How long are they going to be here, though?" Sollux asked. "The rest of the Fleet's got to get back here sooner or later."

"So? If the Empress is dead, they're basically dead in space. The entire Fleet ran when the Condescension blew up. We saw it on the weird alien hologram."

"And images can never be shopped for propaganda, right?" Sollux drawled. "Besides, if the Fleet wants a new Empress, where do you think they're going to look?"

Karkat frowned. "Not in the middle of the mountains, shit for brains. That's even if Feferi's alive. She disappeared a sweep and a half ago, remember?"

Sollux shrugged. "Yeah, well. Did you ask the humans for husktop supplies?"

"No, shockingly, that didn't cross my mind when we were asking for real things that we actually need to survive, you binary bulgemunch." 

After that it was easy to fall back into the routine of arguing with Sollux about things that didn't really matter. Even if the guy was practically an adult now, he was still just the same lisping nerd he'd ever been. When Karkat finally left for his hive near dawn, he felt like the night had turned out well after all.