Chapter Text
“Oh, that’s bullshit!”
Karkat’s cry of indignation rung in the small club room. It drew a giggle from Vriska, who was sitting in the corner painting her Spider-pirates, not paying attention to the game at hand. Karkat’s outbursts were a common occurence, he had strong opinions of the various special rules of each faction.
Sollux slowly adjusted his sunglasses before replying, his lisp accentuating his words.
“KK, you can’t call everything that gives me an advantage bullshit. Special rules exist for strategic variety.”
“Strategic variety my ass, this is the second time you survive a limited weapon with Carapace. It’s a point-blank explosion! How the fuck is “superior external structuring” letting you survive point-blank explosions?!”
“Well, maybe if you didn’t target the biggest thing with limited weapons...”
“Whatever! Your turn, smartass.”
Sollux snickered. Karkat wasn’t the greatest strategist of all time, but he was still pretty new so it was easy to forgive. In time, he’d learn proper use of anti-vehicle units. He looked back at the board, thinking for a second. As much shit as he’d give his best friend, he’d dug himself in pretty solidly. Flanks were impossible, and while Karkat had wasted all his sources of big damage on his Hive Guard, it was difficult to move it beyond the infantry mess that was now the middle of the battlefield…
Sollux’s train of thought was interrupted when the fourth member of the club came in. Carrying a box containing his Triton army under his arm, Eridan ran to the table.
“Hey guys,” he said, voice wavering as usual, “you’ll never guess what just happened this morning.”
“FF finally agreed to go out with you?” Sollux said, with a mocking tone.
“No! Well… I don’t know, she will someday, ok? But listen, Playground just put out the new rulebooks-”
“Yeah,” said Karkat, “we knew about that months ago.”
“But wait! They released them… online. For free.”
Now, even Vriska was interested, carefully placing her spider-pirate on the workbench before approaching the conversation.
“... Are you serious?” asked Sollux, in disbelief.
“Yeah. They said it was to attract new players to the hobby.”
“Which means…” said Vriska, pensive.
Eridan stared at her as he finished.
“That’s right. Grey tide.”
Those words seemed to send a shiver down Sollux’s spine. He started to sputter, muttering about how he “just finished training KK” and “how’re we gonna deal with a big influx of new players”. He seemed really flustered at the idea of more students joining the club.
“Relax,” said Vriska, “I’ll help you with the new kids. Besides, it’ll help us grab more funds for the club and it’ll give shouty some opponents closer to his skill level.”
“Yeah,” added Eridan, “I can help too. Besides, how many players do you think’ll join in one week?”
Karkat sat back while the two veterans comforted the club president. He was rather eager at the news: more people in the hobby meant he might finally make friends other than Sollux. They were also less likely than him to pick super bullshitty armies that the president ran to get players used to special rules.
This’d be fun, he concluded. He was excited to meet the new players.