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> John & Karkat: Eat tacos.
"You can't be serious." Karkat eyed the plate suspiciously. Upon the 35% post-consumer waste recycled pasteboard plate lay a pair of oblong paper-wrapped objects, bright white and orange, with text declaring them products of TACO BELL®. A third, partially unwrapped object, lay nearby, having itself unceremoniously spilled from the hands of the young troll. The supposed foodstuff seemed to innocently stare back, as if nothing at all were amiss. "And just what did you say it was made of?" Karkat continued.
"Uh, it's a taco." The troll looked up in time to see the big, deep blue eyes belonging to a taller, human boy blink twice, revealing his confusion. The human quickly hid the emotion with a nervous smile. "It's like, meat and cheese and lettuce and spices. In a corn tortilla." Satisfied with his entirely unhelpful answer, he ran his hand through his rough black hair, still faintly smiling. Karkat merely scowled and turned his attention back to the object in question.
"A what what now?" The troll let one of his claws slide loose from its channel, and used it to gently pry open the taco's crisp orangey shell, so his own red-flecked glance nuggets could further examine the contents. "No. That brown stuff. The squishy chunky goo stuff." He poked at the goop, pulling some out of the shell with his claw. "What is that made of?"
"Uhh...." John seemed to struggle to put it into words. Karkat rolled his eyes and continued.
"It was a rhetorical question, dumbass. I thought you said there wasn't any culling on Earth?" He retracted his claw and pushed the uneaten taco back across the table towards John, then raised his oculars to meet those of the human.
"No cu...? Oh, oh no, no wait. What?" John shook his head and pushed the taco back to Karkat, then gave that same smile. Karkat narrowed his nugget covers and studied the nervous, yet charming grin. "No, it's not like that. It's not human meat. It's cow meat," the human boy continued.
"Earth human herdbeast corpses. Ground up dead herdbeast." The still-mostly-golden eyes descended back upon the taco.
"Umm... yes? I guess you can put it that way." John's smile was now gone, and he was again shaking his head. "Look, it's not a big deal. I eat beef all the time."
"On Alternia—" Karkat paused to clear his laryngeal tube, grinding out whatever bit of matter had momentarily interrupted the flow of air. "On Alternia, that herdbeast would have been someone's lusus." He shut his covers completely and raised his finger to point to John's throat, took a deep breath, and then opened them again to unleash his best angry schoolfeeding glare upon the obviously unfed human. "You might cull it for weakness, or to settle a debt, or because of wrongdoing - or even to feed it to your own lusus - but you're not going to eat it yourself. After you survive the brooding caverns it's only the really crazy trolls who still have a taste for meat."
Just when he was about to launch into full-on lecture mode, the annoyingly adorable human interrupted, his charming nervous smile returning full force. "But didn't you come from a meteor like us? You weren't ever in any brooding caverns."
"That's not the point here." Karkat withdrew his finger and crossed his arms, mentally shaken by the interruption. "You made me lose my train of thought. No, no, hold on." He unfolded his arms again and held a hand up to the human's mouth, more to block the view of that disarming grin than to halt the boy's words, even though the latter was absolutely what he was accomplishing here. "Just give me a second. I want to clear this up." He took another deep breath.
But before he could launch into whatever tirade which would surely be the human boy's undoing (or that of his ignorance to Alternian culture at least), that selfsame boy had already clasped his fleshy pale human hands around the outstreched rougher grey hand of his current conversation partner. Karkat gaped in shock, but before he could pull away, John had already moved the grey hand down to the table, where the unwrapped taco lay in wait. "Shh. No words. Only tacos now." And, satisfied, the boy then carefully pulled his pale hands back, then made a show of first grasping and then slowly unwrapping one of the two remaining tacos. "See?" He then slowly guided the half-unwrapped taco to his waiting mouth, never at any point breaking eye contact with the shorter troll. Finally, with a resounding crunch, he took a bite from the taco, and again made a show of chewing, slowly, and then swallowing his taco-y takings. "Now you try." He said, returning one hand to the table to make vague shooing motions at the taco now firmly clenched in Karkat's hand.
Karkat stared at the be-handed taco, and his own hand that held it. Traitor, he thought to the unfeeling appendage. "Fine, if it'll get you to shut up." He sighed, then closed his eyes and brought the taco up to his feedhole. Just before the morsel reached his gaping maw, he peeked one nugget from behind its glance inhibitor shield membrane and paused, then once more opened both and closed his mouth. "On second thought—"
"Oh, shut up and eat the taco!" John's two human hands quickly overpowered the surprised Karkat's one, shoving the unsuspecting taco onto the mouth of the angry grey troll. A small portion of its contents penetrated Karkat's lips but the vast majority of the ingredients just kind of got smeared around his mouth, some even spilling out into the increasingly irritated troll's lap. John's grin this time was not the nervous upturned lips of before but the seasoned snicker of a professional trickster, revealing that this, too, was an acceptable outcome. Karkat meanwhile attempted to defend his feeding pipe from the foreign intrusion by enveloping it in his tongue and just kind of pushing it back out, but sticking his tongue out gave John all the window of opportunity he needed to flick a second taco morsel, perfectly aimed, past Karkat's waving tongue and pointy fangs and down his feeding pipe. Karkat reflexively swallowed.
Both boys shared a short moment of silence, Karkat in horror and John in anticipation. Then the young troll began to sweat. "What—" he started, but then the remainder of his sentence dissolved into a coughing fit. John's grin faded and was soon supplanted by a look of worry as the troll continued to cough violently. He stood up and quickly crossed to Karkat's side of the table, placing his right hand on the shorter troll's upper back and rubbing in small circles. Karkat attempted to wave him off, but the effort only intensified his coughing. His cheeks began to tint a decidedly un-troll-like red. He fell out of his chair. "What was in that?" he finally wheezed out in between coughs, as he doubled over on his side on the floor.
John sank to his knees and attempted to cradle the troll, his look of worry now given over to sheer terror. "J-just meat, and, cheese, and, and spices, and—"
"What. Are. Spices." Karkat choked out, in between coughs. By this time his face was completely flooded with red, and his sweat was soaking through his clothing and leaving reddish stains on the floor.
John's terrified face creased in befuddlement. What are spices? "Um, things that make your food taste better I guess? Like peppers to make it hot and stuff?"
Karkat continued coughing. "P—"
"P?" John repeated helpfully.
"Poison," Karkat finally wheezed out before his air ducts completely sealed off and he began to asphyxiate.
> John: Seek insight.
After the incident, Karkat taken firmly into Feferi's care, John resolved to understand the cause of the reaction. Up until now, he'd been winging it, treating his grey-skinned friends just as a weird kind of humans, but he realized now that if he was going to be living with trolls, it's time he understood exactly what their life-and-death differences were.
The most helpful of them would be Kanaya, he guessed, and went about contacting her to set up a meeting. Kanaya had decided to live with Rose instead of the other trolls, and seemed accepting of human culture—and, most importantly, had an almost inexhaustible patience for answering stupid questions.
"So it wasn't the meat after all?" More confused than ever after the first few minutes of their conversation, John split his attention between worrying over Karkat and fidgeting with the taco he'd brought to show Kanaya.
"No John. Trolls are able to digest meat without any difficulty. It's a common filler food for lower classes that are less able to farm and collect the slimes and grub secretions that comprise our more usual diet." Kanaya, patient as ever, resisted the strong urge to comb the human's hair into some semblance of sense as she lectured. "Of course, as a rainbow drinker, I personally abstain, but Nepeta for example is quite the carnivore. Are you sure there was nothing else?"
"Well, I WAS going to prank him with this super mega hyper ultra hot sauce, but I didn't even get the chance!" From a pocket, John produced a small orangish-red bottle replete with skulls and warnings as to the potency of the contents therein. "But I never got the chance! He just had one bite of the taco and then collapsed!"
"And this thing here is a taco?" Kanaya asked, turning her attention to the now cold wrapped object. She accepted it from John's hand and began to peel back the orange and white paper, cautiously sniffing at it as she did.
"Uh, yeah. It's just meat and cheese and lettuce in a tortilla. Nothing special."
"The tortilla is this armored carapace?" She flicked at the yellow shell with a finger and was surprised slightly when a piece broke off. "You don't eat that part too, do you?"
"Uh, yeah. It's just mashed up corn and water, cooked hard. But he didn't have any of that anyway, just some of the filling."
By now Kanaya had pried open the shell and was digging through the contents with one claw. "Corn is one of your grains, correct? It should pose no problem, provided it is properly chewed." She frowned slightly at the remaining contents. "This leafy substance, that is the lettuce? A vegetable product?" She caught a piece between two fingers and pulled it up closer to her eye to study its texture. "It's uncommon to imbibe such things after reaching maturity but it's still easily digestible. It's hard to imagine Karkat having an adverse reaction to any of those things. Allergies of that kind were generally grounds for culling at a much younger age." She carefully wiped her claws on a nearby napkin, and returned her gaze to a still slightly panicked John. "Not, of course, that any of our group were perfect specimens of trollkind. I imagine many of us would have been marked for culling at one point or another, had the game not interrupted such things."
"Uh. Right." John was clearly uncomfortable at the casual tone Kanaya was using to refer to state-sponsored murder. "So, what could it have been, then?"
"You said he had trouble breathing? Any other symptoms?" The troll was now engaged by carefully re-wrapping the taco.
"Well, he was sweating a lot I guess?" John wracked his brain for any other details. "But isn't that normal for you guys? I mean, Equius—"
"No." Kanaya interrupted, quickly. "Equius is far from normal."
"Uh."
"Was there nothing else?"
"Um, he changed colors too? Like his face got really red."
Karkat's blood color had ceased to be a socio-political issue for most of the surviving trolls long ago, but the mention of it gave Kanaya pause, and she set the taco down on the coffee table between their two couches. "We don't actually know that much about the physiological differences in mutants, now that I think about it. But I'm fairly sure that wasn't the cause in any case. And that's all that's in this... taco?" She waved a hand at the rewrapped foodstuff.
"Um..." John glanced nervously about the room as he tried to put his thoughts in order. Wasn't there something else? "Well, the seasonings, I guess, but Taco Bell makes them pretty weak."
"Seasonings?" Kanaya's attention returned to the taco and quickly reopened it. This time she leaned down close to it for inspection. "Some kind of flavoring agent, like honey or grub sauce?"
"Yeah, kinda. Only it's spicy instead of sweet."
"What is 'spicy'?" The troll glanced back up at the boy in time to catch his look of confusion at the unexpected question.
"It's, uh..." he began to answer, with no clear idea of where the answer would lead.
"A defense mechanism employed by plants on our world to prevent consumption by predators. It causes mild sensations of heat and pain. Sensations which humans have evolved to enjoy."
Both John and Kanaya turned from the dissected foodstuff towards the source of the helpful interruption. Rose smiled faintly from the doorway and made a small wave towards John, before crossing the room to join Kanaya on her side of the table.
The troll raised an eyebrow at Rose as she settled into the adjacent seat. "Humans evolved to enjoy pain? Is that why—"
"Whoa hold on TMI guys! I don't want to hear about it!" John sputtered, waving both hands in Kanaya's face. Rose merely smirked in response. More calmly, John continued. "But the spices Taco Bell uses are totally weak! You can barely taste them! That's why I brought the ultra mega hyper hot sauce to prank him with!"
"But you—"
"Didn't end up using it, yeah. He collapsed before I got the chance."
The ever-helpful troll returned her attention to the remains of the taco. "Maybe I should try a bite myself."
"Are you sure?" Rose placed one hand protectively on Kanaya's arm. "What if you have the same reaction? Plus there's your complete lack of digestive organs to contend with." She nodded vaguely towards Kanaya's covered abdomen.
"I won't swallow," Kanaya offered.
"Guys!" John interjected, this time covering his ears.
Ignoring his faux protests, Kanaya merely gathered up one of the larger bits of shell and used it to scoop at the filling. She raised the taco meat to her face, sniffed it again, and then extended her tongue from behind her fangs to give it a taste.
"Trust me, John. She's better with that than she looks." A mischievous grin bloomed on Rose's face as she continued to tease her younger friend.
The boy scrunched his face in disgust and continued to cover his ears, now mumbling to himself "eww eww all of my friends just hold hands and occasionally hug and that's it"
Kanaya, either deadpan or oblivious, quietly withdrew her tongue and announced her findings. "It's poison."
"Uh, no it's not?" John said, confusion replacing disgust on his face. He reached out and grabbed another taco piece from the table, popped it in his mouth and swallowed. "See? Kinda cold now, and bland without sauce, but nothing poison about it."
"That's a matter of opinion, John."
"Oh, shut up, Rose! Just because you never ate fast food—"
"I'll have you know that on special occasions mother would take me on the 40 minute drive to Burger King in order to sample their flame-grilled delicacies." She then waved dismissively at the taco. "But this?"
"I'll give you that it's not the pinnacle of Mexican cuisine—"
"Mexican-inspired cuisine, dear."
"Oh, shut up! It's fine if you put sauce on it!"
Kanaya waited for the argument to subside before continuing. "No John. It really is poison. As a jade blood I myself am immune, although there is still something in the seasoning I find rather less than appealing—"
"That would be the garlic powder, love. Garlic is anathema to vampires."
"Ahem. As I was saying, I as a jade blood am immune. But any other troll save perhaps a god tier like Vriska would quickly succomb. We are lucky Karkat received as small a dose as he did, and that Feferi was readily available to begin treatment." Her sentence pronounced, she pushed the dissected taco back to John's side of the table and again sat up straight.
"Huh. So taco seasoning is poisonous to you guys?" The blue-eyed boy looked kind of lost, as if he could barely comprehend such a weird conclusion.
"Perhaps not just this particular seasoning. What was it you said about 'spicy', Rose?"
"Well, it's a defense mechanism for plants. To discourage predation." The human girl tucked some stray hair behind her ear with her free right hand. "What are you thinking?
"I do not believe it is merely 'discouraging' to non-natives such as us. A larger dose than the one Karkat received would likely be fatal."
"Well, it's a good thing I didn't sneak in any of this ultra mega hyper hot sauce then." As if just now remembering that he was carrying such a thing, Kanaya inched back slightly, then smoothed down her clothing to cover her involuntary fidget.
"Just.. how hot is that, John?" Rose asked.
"I.. don't actually know?" The human boy began to inspect the bottle's label for something other than skulls. "I've never tried it."
Rose and Kanaya exchanged glances, then both turned back towards the dark-haired human. "You realize, then, what you must do?"
> John: Apologize properly.
The next night, after Feferi had finally declared Karkat well enough for visitors, John arrived bearing a tray of food as a peace offering. For Karkat, there was a bowl of honeyed rice porridge—assured him by Kanaya to be much closer to the natural troll diet—but aside from that, once more, were two tacos, this time joined by a small orangish-red bottle and a small bulbous greenish thing.
"What the hell is this, Egbert? Did you come to finish me off?" Karkat's voice was noticeably gruffer than before.
"No silly! The tacos are for me. Rose thought it would be good for both of us to have food together. Some kind of communal thing." He could barely suppress his idiotic grin at the state he found his troll friend in, however. "What did Feferi do to you, anyway?"
The troll before him was arranged in a human hospital bed. His body was wrapped in completely extraneous bandages. His left leg was in traction. Nearby, various machines—none of which seemed to be connected to him in any visible manner—beeped or displayed strange graphs at regular intervals. "I have no fucking idea. I think she got it from one of your shitty human serials. We don't have any of this medical crap on Alternia—either you live on your own or the medicutioners cull you right there." Then his gaze settled on the tacos. "So why did you bring those? Don't you think I've suffered enough?"
"Not... really?" The human boy kind of laughed, and set the tray down on a side table. "OK, look, we figured out what happened—"
"What fucking happened was you tried to poison me with your ground up corpse bits!"
"—and it was no, no way dude, Kanaya told me that wasn't even a thing, like your lower castes ate it all the time when they couldn't get better food!" Then he took a deep breath. "It actually was poison though."
Silence reigned for a long moment. Then, the troll answered. "You have got to be fucking kidding me."
"No, really! The poison is in these things called peppers." John smiled again, nervously trying to calm the troll down. He picked up the green thing by one end and waved it around a bit, then continued. "It's some chemical called capsaicin or something that they use to scare off things that try to eat them!"
"Oh, so that's what you're doing." As if wearied out by all the excitement, Karkat shut his eyes and leaned back in the soft human bed, resigning himself to his fate. "The tacos were only the first step. Now you've gone straight to the source to finish me off once and for all. You've brought out the heavy artillery. The most potent of human poisons. Why John. Why do you insist on the most painful way possible to murder your fellow leader?" As his rant hit a crescendo, he snapped his eyes open and propped himself up on one elbow, leaning close to the human. "Is that what this is about? You're trying to usurp my position? You're trying to—oh no, John, what are you doing, that's poison John what the hell are you—"
"Jeez Karkat, calm down! It's only a jalapeño." The green thing had disappeared down the boy's throat, and he was happily licking juices off his fingers. "Sure it's like 100 times more potent than what was on the taco, but no big." There seemed to be no visible physiological reaction, Karkat noted.
"Uh. Wow." Karkat was suitably impressed with the display, but John was already reaching for phase two: the orange bottle.
"Now this? This is my ultra super mega hyper hot sauce! It's about 2,000 times stronger than the taco." John unscrewed the bottle, unwrapped a taco, and began to season.
"And you're—you're just pouring it on there and—oh god. Oh god."
"Mm! Tasty!" This time, the signs of the neurotoxin taking effect were obvious: John's face became red and he broke out in a slight sweat. Still, it was nothing compared to the scale of Karkat's reaction. "I'd, uh, offer you a bite, but apparently trolls can't stand it at all? Kanaya's convinced it's fatal. Actually Rose tells me Earth animals can't eat it either!" The human took the opportunity to pause and make sure he and the troll had direct eye contact before once again smiling. "Just us humans." The smile had taken a distinctly... predatory air.
"Let me get this straight." Karkat shuffled around in his bed, trying to create a little more space between him and the deranged creature seated before him. "You're eating the burned, desiccated remains of a lusus. Which was lacking in flavor. So you doped it with literal. Poison."
"Yep! Sounds about right." John carefully set the porridge tray down over Karkat's chest, then leaned back and began to dress the second taco for himself.
"Hopy shit. Humans are a lot more hardcore than I gave you credit for."
"So, new ground rule." John said after swallowing a particularly poisonous bite. "Don't eat anything I give you unless Kanaya or Feferi okays it first."
"You have a fucking deal."