Chapter Text
“This is fucking stupid.”
Karkat hunched his shoulders. The endless grey hallway between the main station and the hangar bay was making him itchy, the only sound the smart click of Kanaya’s heels and the slow shuffle of his own out-of-regulation shoes. She turned her head to look over her shoulder and shrugged apologetically. Yeah, that’s fucking right. She should feel bad, it was her fault he was here at all. She was the one who’d convinced him to run for student council president. Of course it was his own natural leadership ability that had led to his landslide victory, but it was totally her fault that he’d even tried in the first place.
So here he was, walking down the stupidly long hallway to the hangar bay to greet the stupid fucking pink monkey aliens from their nookstain planet that was so backwards, it didn’t have proper interstellar travel. What the fucking idea was arranging for this foreign exchange shit was beyond him, but as he was still in school and not yet leader of everybody he had to let it slide. They’d said something about “cultural exchange” and “promoting the understanding of other species” blah blah blah... He hadn’t paid much attention. Something about it had seemed weird, but he didn’t give enough of a fuck to investigate further.
“You didn’t have to come,” she reminded him, her tone irritatingly placating.
“Yes, I so fucking did have to come don’t you even pretend I didn’t. Jegus.” He grit his teeth together. The alternative was spending more time in the student council meeting room with everyone else, and fuck all if he wanted to be there, with Eridan running around like a fucking moron in a cape. An out-of-regulation cape, fucking hemospectrum.
“This is a good opportunity for you. To, ah,” Kanaya paused thoughtfully, “demonstrate your leadership abilities.”
“Whatever,” he snorted.
The main hangar bay was a large construct, with high ceilings and spartan architecture. It could fit four large passenger vessels comfortably, though most of the space was devoted to more agile fighters. The two auxiliary hangar bays were much less impressive, so whenever the school needed to receive guests they were sent here. What it lacked in decoration it made up for in precise architectural lines, and ridiculously expensive materials. Karkat fucking hated it. Showy shit, but it would probably impress the dumb fucking humans.
He could hear them now as he and Kanaya approached the recently docked ship. He’d heard, though this was an unconfirmed rumor, that their backwards species hadn’t actually been able to leave their own solar system yet. That, until they’d been approached by the Alternian government, they’d had no idea there were even other sentient beings in the universe. He found that pretty hard to believe, but that was the rumor. Karkat searched through his memory, trying to dreg up what (actual, confirmed) information he could about the humans. There were four of them, he knew, two males and two females, and they were each about eight sweeps old. Of course they counted time differently, backwards and inferior as they were, but it did make them all roughly the same age. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.
“He--”
“Oh MAN!” Before Karkat could get a word out, one of the humans was already making a fucking moron out of himself. “Is this for real? Seriously? Guys can you seriously believe we’re in space right now? And just got off a space ship? Oh man.”
Karkat squinted, feeling suddenly tired. The one flailing his arms around and shouting was slightly taller than the rest, gawky and bony with dark hair and glasses and weird, round teeth that stuck out a bit in the front. They were bizarrely pink and soft-looking. Two of them had yellow hair, and all of them had the weirdest colored eyes. For a moment Karkat had to gawk. He’d seen them in pictures, of course, but it was one thing to see something this weird in a photograph and another to know for a fact that it was real and not just some really bad idea of a joke.
Kanaya cleared her throat delicately. The dumb flaily monkey stopped and turned around, seemingly unembarrassed. In fact, none of them seemed even remotely bothered by their friend’s asinine behaviour. This was a troubling indication of their overall fucking worthlessness.
“Oh man, are you guys the ones who are supposed to meet us?”
His eyes were blue, what the fuck was up with that? Who the fuck had blue eyes? They took up like, half his fucking head too. Black pupils but-- blue eyes? In white?
“We’re from the student council,” Kanaya put in helpfully. Karkat had, he noticed with no little self-loathing, lost himself in staring. “I’m Kanaya Maryam.”
“Rose Lalonde.” One of the other monkeys cut in. This one had been quieter, one of the females with the freakish hair. Or maybe that was normal for humans, whatever. It looked weird, anyway. She held out a soft pink hand. Both Kanaya and Karkat stared at it uncomprehendingly. “Oh.” She retracted her hand. This was probably some sort of stupid human thing, wasn’t it. Some kind of etiquette thing and they’d fucked it up by not researching things. Fuck.
“I’m John Egbert.” Oh, good, just who he wanted to hear from! The flaily monkey-- John, Karkat reminded himself, he had to call him John --was still standing there, grinning away. Humans had the weirdest fucking teeth, he decided. Round and smooth. What good were they, anyway? They didn’t look like they could tear much of anything. Humans were such a funny-looking species, seriously.
“Jade! Jade Harley.” This one looked a lot like Egbert-- they both had stupid glasses and even stupider teeth. Karkat instantly hated them both. Hated them all, really, which was something of a novelty because he was almost beginning to think he’d run out of things to hate. A guy could only hate everyone he knows so long before it becomes a little stale. At least none of the other humans stuck their hands out in some human greeting gesture, whatever it was. The last one just laughed and didn’t offer his name at all. Whatever! Slime-sucking bastard, like Karkat even wanted to know.
“Dave,” the John human said, socking the blond male in the arm, “Dave this is amazing! You are not too cool for space and space aliens Dave, you just aren’t.”
The blond-- Dave, with the same coloring as the human Rose, turns his head and shrugs. He was wearing sunglasses, which was absurd considering they are not only indoors but in space. All the light is metered here to be at the perfect level of sensitivity for most eyes. Even trolls didn’t have a problem with the light level in the school, there’s no way a human would. If anything, the sunglasses should be causing him difficulty! Kanaya always did like to say the school was too dim. (She usually said “ambient”, but whatever, you didn’t have to be a fucking genius to know what she meant.) The John human made some sort of stupid noise.
“Well,” Karkat cut in, his voice held barely under control, “I think we should get a move on, shouldn’t we?” Without another fucking word, Karkat spun on his heels and started off back down the hallway exiting the main hangar bay. He didn’t turn to look behind him and see if they were following-- he hated them already, what did it matter? Their belongings had been sent ahead and were waiting for them in boxes in their quarters, along with their own uniforms. All Karkat really needed to do was give the tour.
+
The tour, as it turned out, was an unmitigated disaster.
Karkat’s uncanny and keen leaderly senses had accurately gauged the nature of the pink mon-- humans, immediately upon meeting them. He would be proud of this if his snap judgement hadn’t been “these people are all stupid and should be culled immediately”. Even the most mundane of accommodations on the station were subject to unrestrained awe on Egbert’s part, and jokes about certain disgusting-sounding parts of human anatomy from the Dave human. (Karkat didn’t know what a dick was, but it sounded absolutely fucking revolting and he did not appreciate the five seconds of his life he wasted on pondering what it could possibly be.) The Jade human seemed to know what a lot of it was, which was fucking bizarre because he was pretty sure their backwards shitpile planet didn’t have anything like alchemizers or transportilizers or anything else fucking useful, but when Kanaya asked in tones a lot more polite than the ones Karkat was inclined to use, Rose helpfully explained that Jade was something of a scientist back on Earth.
Still, it took all of Karkat’s considerable and admirable self-control not to choke Egbert until his eyes started to bleed when he knocked over his fourth important thing he’d just been asked not to touch that day. Even grubby wrigglers had more grace than this kid. How a planet that hadn’t culled him for excessive stupidity upon his birth managed to advance at all, let alone to the point of notice by the Alternian military, was far beyond him. Just when he thought he had reached a baseline of irritation that he could settle into, the John human opened his stupid round-toothed mouth and said something else fucking stupid.
Especially when it came to talking about movies.
“Hey!” The John human came up from behind him as Kanaya was explaining the finer points of station policies, procedures and expected student attire at length and in detail. ‘Oh jegus.’ He was grinning. ‘Please don’t let this fucking waste of oxygen want to be my fucking friend.’ Or pal, or buddy, or whatever stupid fucking human word he used over and over until Karkat punched himself in the face to make the hurting stop. Not that he had any real experience with Egbert that would say he would do this; he just seemed the type.
“Hey!” he said again, and clapped Karkat on the shoulder. Karkat glared up at him, catching a cautionary glance from Kanaya as he did so. Fine! Just fucking fine! He’d be nice to the shit for brains, jegus. Internally he berated his past self for being too spineless and stupid to turn down Kanaya and Sollux’s suggestion he run for student council. Really if he thought about it, Sollux probably only said it was a good idea because he’s an asshole. Worst fucking moirail ever. Fuck him.
“What.” It wasn’t really a question, more like a growled, gritted acknowledgement that he was being spoken to. They made a turn down another hallway, this one filled with in and out of uniform students. The tour was luckily almost over, and they were approaching the shared respite blocks that the students all stayed in, and then they would be gone and Karkat would be free of the grubsucking wrigglers.
The pale fuck laughed. Gog, Karkat hated him so much right now. What the fuck was even so funny? A guy answers after being followed by some scrawny-ass alien and he laughs? The shit?
“I was just-- hey, man, what’s your name?” Karkat stared at him because that was quite possibly the worst, stupidest question anyone has ever asked him. The fuck is this?
Which is what he asked the nooksucking weirdo.
"What do you mean, man? Haha whoa I just wanted to know your name, dude, chill out! You're pretty high-strung, you know that?"
Karkat grit his teeth. "Vantas. Karkat Vantas. You can call me none of these things." His face looked surprised. Good. That’s the way it should be-- all this chummy shit was starting to get creepy. Even being on a first name basis with freaky aliens was too fucking much.
“Well. Whatever you say, I guess!” He looked kind of hurt, and Karkat almost felt bad. Almost. He opened his mouth to say something, but whatever it was got lost in the sudden flurry of activity as they reached the respite deck. Egbert flashes Karkat a stupid, doofy smile with his weird flat teeth and then jogs to catch up with the others. Finally, this fucking excruciating brain aneurysm of a tour was over.
“These are your respite blocks,” he explained, gesturing to smooth black doors with no visible depressions or handles. “Your stuff is already there, so. Go nuts, what the fuck ever.” It took the brainless shits a couple minutes to figure out the doors. Jegus. Eventually they did, though, which meant finally, fucking finally, he could go back to classes and his own respite block and never see any of them ever again. He turned to leave, catching Kanaya chatting quietly with the weird-colored female out of the corner of his eye. (She always was slightly weird.)
“Oh! Hey, uh! Hey! You! Uhhhhm.... Hey Karkat!”
“What did I just fucking tell, you Egb--”
“I’ll see you around, okay?” He grinned, then went inside.
Gog he fucking hoped not.