Chapter Text
An electrical discharge in the atmosphere of the planet Alternia jolted one of its denizens from a fitful sleep. Normally such a storm in the middle of the day would have been soothing, but this one was too loud and too close for his already frayed nerves.
He pulled himself up out of his recuperacoon and reached for a sopor-stained towel hanging nearby. Slime dripped off of him and pooled on the floor, but he didn’t care. As soon as he’d dried off, he dropped the towel onto the floor so it could soak up the puddle.
He grabbed his coat off a hook on the wall and frowned slightly when he caught sight of one of his faded movie posters. He found his pants on the floor and pulled them on, then put on the coat, leaving the belts undone. A stylized, angular version of his symbol in the same anonymous gray he’d always used was the only identifying insignia he allowed himself. Anyone else who looked at it would think it was just a decoration.
This was Karkat Vantas, and his insomnia had been getting worse recently. Well, maybe the sleeplessness itself hadn’t changed, but the day terrors that caused it certainly had. When he was younger, he used to dream of a beautiful golden planet inhabited by strange, peaceful white creatures, but that had been short-lived. Still, it stuck in his memory, and he often wished he could go back there instead of…well.
Karkat padded down the hall, leaving his respiteblock behind. His still-damp feet slapped against the floor, probably leaving behind puddles. But, again, he didn’t care. He didn’t see this hive as his home anyway, and why would a squatter care about sopor stains on the linoleum?
The thunder grew louder and the lightening brighter as Karkat stepped into the sparsely furnished livingblock. The noise was deafening and the light cut viciously through the curtains. He stepped cautiously around any illuminated patches on the floor, even though the sunlight itself was negligible. It was a species-wide habit, reinforced with a considerable amount of superstition.
If sleep was going to continue to evade him, Karkat figured he might as well watch a movie. He dug one of his favorite romcoms out of a sack in the corner, slid the disk into a movie player he’d picked up on the side of a road, turned on the television he’d picked up on the side of a road, and sat down on the couch he’d also picked up on the side of a road. They were complete pieces of shit, but it wasn’t exactly like he could afford to shop at furniture stores. Even if Karkat had the money, they randomly checked for identity on even the most trivial purchases, and it wasn’t a risk he was willing to take.
But before the title of the movie had even been fully scrolled through at the end of the opening credits, Karkat felt himself begin to drift off.
The next thing he knew, the time on the clock had changed by a considerable amount, the light outside had faded, the storm was over, and the words “The End” were hard at work burning themselves into the screen of his shitty TV. And someone was knocking on the door.
Oh, shit.