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Karkat brought the sword down hard, and Tavros evaded the blow with a squeak. “If you’re not going to use your fucking sword, at least do something with your shield!” Karkat said, panting. He lunged forward. “Training you—“ Tavros parried his blow. “Is like—“ Karkat made a feint and changed directions. “Stabbing myself repeatedly—“ He brought the sword around, and Tavros just managed to duck beneath it. “In my goddamn eye sockets!” He kicked Tavros’s feet from under him, and the boy fell on his back with a grunt. Karkat leveled the blade at his throat. “Get up and get something to drink,” he said, stepping back. “I don’t need you passing out all over the training grounds. Again.”
Karkat threw the blunt sword to the ground and walked to the benches lining the walls, searching for his water skin. Tavros sighed and gathered up his sword and shield. “Tavros, my brother!” someone called across the training field. Tavros looked around. “Up on this motherfuckin’ wall!” Tavros smiled as he recognized the voice, and he looked up at Gamzee, who sat on the bastion at the corner of the training ground with a gigantic grin on his face.
“Hey, Gamzee,” Tavros called, waving. Gamzee swung his legs back and forth, rocking on the stone ledge. “Did Eridan kick you out of the throne room again, or did you just feel like climbing walls, which is something I actually didn’t know you could do?”
“Yeah, bro, my motherfuckin’ climbin’ skills are motherfuckin’ sick!” Gamzee said, laughing. “I had no clue about this miraculous motherfuckin’ gift either, but I guess it’s what’s up, since I’m all up on this rude wall. Who woulda motherfuckin’ thought?”
“That is really weird, in a way that could be miraculous if that’s how you want to think about. Maybe, when I’m done with this hell training, we can hang out later, and we can slam about it?”
“What the hell are you calling ‘hell training’?” Karkat asked, throwing his water skin at Tavros from the bench he rested on. It hit him in the back of the head with a wet splat and fell to the ground. Rubbing the back of his head, Tavros bent to pick it up, grumbling. “When I was in your position, I was running fucking laps around the other shit-eating squires who were busy wasting their time licking their knights’ lazy fucking asses, and if you think I’m going to let you lounge around like the rest of the useless turds clogging up the knight’s hall, you’d better skip your way back to the mystery land you came from. We haven’t even started the real training yet. You can’t even touch a long piece of sharp steel without pissing yourself, and you’re already calling this ‘hell training.’ Get your shit together.”
“Aw, bro, no need to get so motherfuckin’ salty about that shit,” Gamzee said. “Just ‘cause you had all sorts of motherfuckin’ trouble when you were up and learnin’ how to rock the wicked knight shit doesn’t mean you have to shit all up on our good bro. His miraculous robo legs can’t handle what sort of heavy training you go around doin’.”
“What do you know?” Karkat snapped. Tavros shot him an inquisitive glance.
“You had trouble—uh,” he began, but Karkat turned his glare on him and he quickly shut his mouth. Disappointed, he averted his gaze and shuffled his metal feet in the dirt. “I just didn’t think someone as unquestionably good at things, like the way you are, would ever have trouble at being a page, like the way I do,” he said.
Karkat watched him for a moment and huffed. “I was always unquestionably good at things. I was basically fucking born to be a knight and draw this shitstain of a kingdom out of the dark ages with my undeniable charisma and ferocity of will,” he said. “But yeah, I had it pretty fucking hard on the way up. My bloodcaste fucked me over.”
“Your bloodcaste?” Tavros asked. “I thought you were a highblood, like Eridan or Gamzee, or all the other pages and knights in the kingdom.”
“Nah, bro, Karkat’s got all sorts of weird-ass mutant blood flowing through his motherfuckin’ veins,” Gamzee said.
Karkat gritted his teeth and yelled up to him, “Would you keep it down?” He glanced around the training field out of force of habit. The three of them were the only people in the courtyard, which was surrounded by high stone walls, and the door to the knight’s hall was closed. The likelihood of anyone overhearing their conversation was low. Karkat knew that it really didn’t matter anyway; his blood color had been revealed to the court shortly after he became a knight, and Eridan had chosen to overlook it. Even so, he still felt uncomfortable when anyone talked about it openly.
“You’ve got mutant blood?” Tavros asked. “What does that mean? What color is it?”
“When you’re finally competent enough to draw blood, maybe you’ll find out,” Karkat said. “No more questions about my blood.”
“Okay, but, theoretically, knowing your tragic backstory and understanding what sort of trials you faced when you were a page, like I am, would potentially help inspire me to work harder, so that I might push hard enough to overcome my handicap of clumsy robot legs,” Tavros said.
“Fuck yeah, best friend, teach your page about all your motherfuckin’ trials,” Gamzee said. “I’ll come and help! Just you let me get my motherfuckin’ self all down from this tall ass wall...”
“No! This isn’t story time!”
Gamzee ignored him and slipped down off the wall, hanging from the bastion by the ends of his fingers. He looked around him for something to ease his descent.
“Gamzee, uh, that method of climbing looks—“
Before Tavros could finish his sentence, Gamzee slipped and fell two stories, landing on his back. Karkat leapt to his feet. He sighed with relief as Gamzee sat up, rubbing his back.
“You stupid fucking clown!” Karkat said, stomping over to Gamzee. “Don’t climb on things if you don’t know how to get back down! Nobody should have to fucking tell you something so obviously sensible, but here we are. Did you permanently injure yourself?”
Tavros joined him, squatting next to Gamzee, and Gamzee shot them both an apologetic grin. “Don’t you work up all your motherfuckin’ worries about me,” he said, clambering to his feet. “I’m made of some miraculous fuckin’ material what can take a little bruisin’ now and then.”
“Wow, Gamzee,” Tavros said, looking up the bastion. “I’m with Sir Karkat, in saying that even though your climbing skills are apparently impressive, that you shouldn’t do that anymore, for the sake of your health and probably the emotional well-being of the people around you.”
“If you motherfuckin’ say so, bro!” Gamzee said, laughing. “I’ll keep all the crazy motherfuckin’ climbing antics to my wicked stunt performances that Terezi likes so motherfuckin’ much.”
“Let’s not even begin to talk about that,” Karkat said, rolling his eyes.
“Yeah, that’s a whole ‘nother motherfuckin’ story, and this story time is all about you, best friend!”
“That’s not what I meant, fucknuts.”
“Now, what was it we were all flapping our protein chutes about before I up and fell?”
“Sir Karkat’s trials, and how they might help me better understand how to tap into my own trials, and potentially as a consequence of those inspirational stories, pull out self-confidence to keep me from getting my ass kicked over and over again.”
“Motherfuckin’ right, bro!” Gamzee put his arm around Tavros and drew him to his side, producing an old and out of tune lute from his codpiece. “Let me motherfuckin’ tell you, my brother, the story of Sir Karkat—“
“No!” Karkat snapped, yanking the lute away from him. “I will break every instrument you own before I let you put my shitty pagedom to verse. You will not, under any circumstance, skip around the goddamn court singing about the godawful ordeals I had to undergo to earn my place in our loonybin of a court. Do you understand me?”
“Aw, c’mon, bro, that’s half the motherfuckin’ fun!”
“Yeah!” Tavros said.
“If you start taking his side, it’s his horse you’re going to be cleaning up after,” Karkat said to Tavros.
“Do you have a horse?” Tavros whispered to Gamzee. Gamzee furrowed his brow.
“Hey, bro...” he said, turning to Karkat.
“You don’t have a fucking horse, supor brains.”
“Then what will I—“
“Nothing. You won’t be doing a goddamn thing.”
“Oh.”
“But best friend, if I can’t be all singing your praises, how will I go about telling our good bro here how badass you are?”
“You could try just telling him for a change,” Karkat said, “but since I know you’re not up to that challenge, how about you take the backseat and let somebody else tell the story.”
“Fuck yes!” Gamzee said with a whoop. “Let’s go!” With a gleeful grin, he turned, taking Tavros with him, and led them both to the benches lining the courtyard.
“Wait,” Karkat said, but Gamzee had already plopped Tavros down next to him. His enthusiasm had rubbed off on Tavros, and they sat grinning at Karkat, waiting for him to join them. He planted one of his hands on his face and drew it down. “Goddamn it...this really is story time,” he said as he trudged over to them.
“I’m going to make this quick, because we have real shit to do,” Karkat said. He pointed at Gamzee. “And then you need to go back to the court. I’m almost positive someone there misses you.”
“You motherfuckin’ think so?”
“Hell yeah, nobody can derail Eridan’s pointless fucking rants about his maniacal war plans the way you can,” Karkat said. “I’m pretty sure everyone would rather listen to your horrible wailing than sit through another stupid plan to bulldoze the Neverland forest.”
“Aw, thanks, bro, but I’m not to be walkin’ all up into the throne room for another few hours, by orders from Eridan, who threw me out for that same motherfuckin’ thing!”
“I’m not even surprised to hear that,” Karkat said, rolling his eyes. “Whatever, it doesn’t matter. As long as you’re not wailing here, I guess you can hang around.”
“Fuck yeah!” Gamzee said, and he exchanged high fives with Tavros.
“Stop it,” Karkat said. “I’m starting now. As both you bulgechomps probably know, I have kin in the Beforus court. Apparently they have a thing for coddling trolls who would otherwise be thrown off a cliff in more sophisticated societies, like ours, and they let my asshole kin into their court as their seer. He has the gift of sight, like Terezi does, so he’s not completely useless there. Long story short, I could not stand to listen to him go on and fucking on about every goddamn thing anyone could possibly think to talk about for more than five goddamn fucking seconds as though anyone fucking cared for another sweep of my fucking life, so I got my ass transferred to Alternia as a page. Everyone knows Alternia is way more badass than Beforus in every way possible, which is awesome and I love it, but it also means that my blood color actually matters here. Nobody coddles mutants in Alternia. They throw them over cliffs like sophisticated goddamn people. Do you know how hard it is to train in combat without bleeding ever?”
He paused to glare at them, and Tavros raised his hand. “I do.”
“It was a rhetorical question,” Karkat said. “Put your hand down.”
“What did you do?”
“I fought, obviously. I fought like my pathetic life depended on it, because it probably did. I worked my fucking ass off, day and night, to get good at literally everything, so that I could beat anyone in a fight, at any time, with any weapon.”
“Can you?” Tavros asked. Awe was written across his face, and Karkat soaked it in.
“Probably,” he said with a shrug, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck nonchalantly. “It’s hard to tell with the nooksniffing group of slackers we have calling themselves knights in this kingdom. I sure as hell could beat any of them.”
“Wow,” Tavros said.
“And that, brother, is why this motherfucker is the best motherfuckin’ knight in Alternia,” Gamzee said, flashing Tavros a grin.
“I didn’t realize that I was so incredibly lucky,” Tavros said, returning Gamzee’s grin. “I never would have guessed before I fell off that horse that something anyone would call a tragedy by any stretch of the imagination would actually be a big opportunity.”
“That’s right,” Karkat said. He smacked Tavros lightly in the back on the head. “Now get off your ass and go get your stuff. We’re going to go another round, and if you don’t land a hit this time, so help me horrorterrors, I will toss you over the fucking battlements. And no shield this time!”
Tavros scurried to his weapons, and Karkat sighed, drawing his hand through his hair. Gamzee clapped a hand on his back and said, “I know what all could get my little bro’s pump biscuit beatin’ all that battle blood up through his cute little motherfuckin’ body!”
“No.”
“A motherfuckin’ battle tune is what!”
“No, damn it. I told you, no wailing.”
“There isn’t a motherfuckin’ thing that’d make swingin’ those heavy fuckin’ swords around better than some motherfuckin’ melodies and a couple of sick rhymes all up in your motherfuckin’ hearducts!”
“I could name at least a hundred things that would make this exercise in futility better than your godawful screeching,” Karkat said, shoving his hand into Gamzee’s face. “Is this really all you do with your time? Make a scene until people notice you and then follow them around making a whole bunch of racket nobody in their right minds would ever, ever ask for?”
“Yeah, pretty much, invertebrother!”
“Then go do it somewhere else!”
Gamzee laughed. “You know you wanna hear my miraculous motherfuckin’ music!” he said, throwing an arm around Karkat’s shoulder. Karkat groaned as he took another crappy lute out of his codpiece.
“You know what? Do whatever the hell you want. I’m going to be over there, kicking the shit out of my failure of a page, who can hardly walk down a set of stairs on his creaky robot legs without endangering his life,” Karkat said, slipping out from under Gamzee’s arm and walking towards his sword.
“You motherfuckin’ got it!” Gamzee called to his retreating back. Karkat huffed as the first sound of the lute floated across the field, and he heard Tavros giggle. He grabbed his sword, and without warning, he turned and sprung at Tavros, yelling loudly enough to alert the boy to his surprise attack.
From around the curved wall of the bastion, a small rogue with cat-like horns watched Karkat throw Tavros to the ground, trying unsuccessfully to suppress her laughter.