Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A soft pattering of ocean waves careen against the cliffside. I tilt my head down and think about jumping. Not because of any latent suicidal tendencies I promise. Mostly because it would get me out of this soon-to-be grating social interaction. The sun of Deltritus lies gently on my skin. I’ve never been able to get a taste of what the “earth sun” looks like but I trust what you said about it. Dirk knows I’m stalling but he couldn't understand why. I never stopped searching, I only stopped moving.

"I see you picked up the habit of monologuing to oneself, welcome to the club”

“IT W4S JUST MY NARRAT1ON D1RKW4D”

“Dirk, our seed has already spread itself and begun to gestate.”

“1 D1DN’T 4SK 4BOUT YOUR GROSS HOMO-NCULUS OF 4 SP3C13S. D1RK 1F 1 D1DN’T KNOW ANY B3TT3R 1’D TH1NK YOU W3R3 3XC1T3D”

“Maybe I am excited. Why shouldn't I be? Rose and I just secured the legacy of the most important planet in this universe, in delirious bibliconoclasty style”

“The game is about to be afoot as all fuck.”

“And to top it all off, I descend from the firmament to the news that you might have it in you to stop being such a bummer all the time and play ball?”

“To the surprise of nobody with half a head on their shoulders, things keep coming up Dirk.”

“So come on. Take my hand.”

“1 C4N’T DO TH1S”

“Come on, it’ll be the closest you’ve ever had to fun."

“I promise it doesn’t hurt or anything.”

“1T HURTS M3 MOR3 TH4N YOU KNOW.”

“There is no point in getting cold feet now.”

“...”

I grab hold of Terezi’s hand as she twists and squirms. She understands that this is the necessary course of action for our timeskip. However she will make it difficult, which allows me to illustrate the time and place that our story is currently filling in the narrative. What a kind gesture out of something so ingratiatingly pointless. Rose grabs tight and soon I’ll b-

“SHUT TH3 FUCK UP D1RK”

And we’re gone

Chapter Text

I arrive alone. The air feels heavier and the night has come out. It’s very very fucking cold. I grab at the dirt and take a small tasting but I’m wise enough to not start having a snack on the job. Because now it’s time to get to business. Cue the music. There are odd noises far in front of me. They pierce my mind and seem to draw me forward. I’m surrounded by trees in seemingly every direction. The wind picks up pace and sends a chill across me. This place feels utterly, all-encompassingly... dark.

I check my possessions and find various rations that I’ve prepared stored within your wallet. Everything is just where I put it. I flick out my wings and blast off to that strange metal box. A memorable location would attract that light. I tilt my head to the sky and feel the wind, it tastes dirty. Different from the pleasant grime of dirt. It has an aura of... deep blue. But I don’t really want to think of that right now. Suddenly I hear a voice.

Terezi is referencing me dear reader. My narrative acceleration has gone swimmingly. Terezi has landed into the fully actualized industrialization of Deltritus. However, neither of us have really gotten into the canonical meat and potatoes of this place. Me personally? I’m hyped out my wazoo.

“WH4T DO YOU W4NT.”

Well considering your new past-time of increased narrative significance I figured this would be an apt form for filling you in. Mainly on the giant meteor that is about to cross your path, and my path but I feel that something of that small of a scale would matter more to you.

“4LR1GHT TH3N, C4N 1 G3T B4CK TO F1ND1NG MY OWN W4Y 1N.”

“OR SHOULD 1 S1T DOWN 4ND PR3P4R3 FOR GRUB STORY HOUR?”

Neither of those will come to play today. For you will not find what you search for and I cannot make the time to monologue (I definitely can.) I will lead you to the remains of your grumbling quarters. From where I warped you it should be due east. Since you’re flying to that meaningless building you’ll have to take a sharp left turn. You’re welcome. Isn’t my timing so... convenient.

“...”

I stop and seriously consider whether I should just keep going. Knowing Dirk he’s definitely right but sometimes it’s worth it to ignore him regardless. But there’s too much on the line if I fail. So I take a sharp turn left. I become grounded in order to sense a path. Slowly following it leads me to the rubble of my shelter. There’s the remains of an electronic door, it is barely functional. Inside, I find the lone terminal that I used all those many seconds ago.

Chapter Text

The screen has a large crack in the top right corner but it seems to have maintained shape after one thousand “years.” As a smart legislacerator, I watch before I act. But as a blind troll who’s being mind monitored by THE BIGGEST DOUCHE THIS SIDE OF HIS EGO I can not be bothered. I tap a key and the monitor comes to life. It points to three colored circles. They coalesce into a single point that is marked white. A command prompt appears

> Search Color - 0:255:0

I type enter

-Invalid. Switching to urgent monitor.-

Suddenly the screen flips 180 and reveals a large glowing red timer.

-99:99:99

-Invalid Timer Variable, switching to connection monitor.-

-Invalid. Switching to urgent monitor.-

I get the hint that this piece of junk isn’t going to be too useful. However it does give me four places that I can go.

Terezi, no plan is without its hitches. However this plan is fairly hitchless, when the state the Deltritans left it in is discarded. Rose and I are looking for creatures currently as well as any advanced technology. That machine managed to give me a more pinpoint tag of your location, it will also serve an important function later once we get a mechanic or something. Don’t get distracted, there will be time for him. In the meantime you better hunker down.

The timer on the monitor flicks back up until it makes it all the way back to zero. Then it keeps going until it reaches a time of 00:02:31. It then flips the other way and slowly begins to tick down. I take my duly needed examinative sweep of the room. There’s a file cabinet filled with rot that the more I think about it, the more it clouds my nose. In addition there’s some sort of odd blue fabric on the ground here? The electronic door has locked itself, there goes plan one. There’s nothing in here that can help me, there goes plan two. Time for plan three.

I start shouting to Dirk as the timer ticks further and further. I scramble through the file cabinets and machines. I double and triple check every facet of this building. Was this his plan, to leave me to die? Or is he going to swoop in at the last second to make me more indebted to him? I’m supposed to lead the players and yet I know jack fucking shit myself. Is this what I deserve, stuck hundreds of sweeps past any sort of joy this planet ever had. Just to make something that’s relevant?

Suddenly the monitor flicks off and on several times. I hear a shooting star whizz across the sky. With the faintest voice ringing in my ears, but I can’t make out a word it’s saying. The voice sounds a little intense and panicked. A message appears on the monitor.

-You’re welcome-
-Need you to fly-
-To green-

These are written in the same manner as the ones I wrote for the Deltritans but that shouldn’t be possible. Only the three of us have the access code. If this is some nonsense from Rose I wouldn’t be surprised. The monitor has a set of coordinates on it as well as a message.

The monitor shuts off and I copy the coordinates to my glasses. I can’t let what happened with that timer slip, it was certainly odd. However I have too many things on my food tray. It kills me to wait but I can’t take a break now. My mind jumps from point to point and end to end and the ride becomes a blur. I catch myself right before I ram into the earthy bark of a tree.

I find a massive crater in the ground. Light seems to flood into this space, flashing the atmosphere with warm tastes. The sun in this time finally has a color I can pinpoint. Pure white.

Chapter Text

I enter the crater and am bombarded by some odd high-pitch wailing noise. I can’t see anything, it hurts so bad. I fall to my knees and start quivering. The world begins to shrink around me, the trees shake and rattle while the ground cracks. I feel a warmth growing louder and louder. Invading every one of my senses. Taking over whatever screeching was there before. Then suddenly, it ends. Nothing makes a sound. I take a deep breath in and feel my surroundings. Same as what I saw before.

However the crater has become even deeper and at the deepest point there’s the smallest peek of some sort of screen. When I taste it, it tastes of bright green light. The dirt is wet and easy to move out of the way. It takes a short amount of time for me to get the full small machine out. It’s a puzzle on how it’s even possible for it to be on and who the hell hides monitors in the ground. It’s a flarp classic to hide things in the ground but now I’m just reminiscing. There’s nothing here to control. My glasses ping with a message, it tastes grim. It’s some sort of virus that begins to run on my glasses. Beaming out into the world, recreating some sort of atmosphere. A very familiar atmosphere for me.

THE LAND OF FLOW AND THOUGHT

The rain begins to pour down onto my tongue. The air crackles with a minty taste. I hear more of that wailing but it’s much quieter now. It’s confusing what the green circle implies. Perhaps it is me, perhaps I’ll have to run into the other two.

“GLUB GLOOB”

“D34R GOG”

“HIllo my namI Es Rikar”

“E nIId your hIlp!”

“I havI bIIn... waEtEng for you!”

“1’M NOT SUR3 1 C4N UND3RST4ND TH4T?”

“BUT INCOHMPR3H3NS1B1L1TY SHOULD N3V3R STOP YOU!”

AquatEc Es a tough dEalIct”

“PlIasI takI mI wEth you!”

“HMMM.”

“1’M NOT SUR3 WH4T 1’M SUPPOS3D TO B3 DO1NG”

“SO COM3 ON L1TTL3 GRUB”

I will take talking to this 7 sweep old over those two pretentious douchebags any day.

This place feels different than the LOTAF. Something about it is... cheerier. Or at least it would be if anyone was around. It’s grim to search through this place and find nothing. We stand in one of many giant valleys of moist rock.

There’s giant complexes cutting through the valleys. They have an odd prismatic quality to them and the odd grub says they used to hold large groupings of “kelpies” as they’re called. Rikar grabs my hand with a tentacle as we enter onto the land. I jump, I’ve been trained

“What’s your namI?”

"T3R3Z1”

“TErEzI...”

“I nIId watIr.”

“L1ST3N... 1 LOV3 TH4T FOR YOU BUT W3’R3 BOTH LOST OUT OF OUR M1NDS.”

Are you seeing this? I’m interacting with new people again. Just like you asked me to. Ya happy John? The grub has odd flippers so I hoist them onto my back and start walking. Dirk if you’re out there now is the time to send your little grublings before I make up my mind. And to save me from this long walk.

“MEss?”

“1’M SORRY?”

“ArI you from nIar hIrI?”

“OH! H3H3, D3F1N1T3LY NO”

“YOU 3V3R H34RD OF A PL4C3 C4LL3D ALTERNIA?”

“No?”

“B3C4US3 1T’S TOT4LLY D34D!”

“JUST L1K3 TH1S PL4C3”

“E don’t thEnk so... not as long as wI’rI hIrI”

hm... I don’t know. Something about that feels too good to be true. That Alternia could live on inside of me. That you could be living on in me.

“TH4T’S 1NT3R3ST1NG...”

“YOU’R3 4 SM4RT GRUB.”

“What’s a grub?”

“YOU KNOW? WH3N YOU’R3 L1TTL3?”

“We cEll thosI BabEIs?”

GOD DAMNIT DIRK. YOU FUCKING BITCH! Ow! Why the hell does my head hurt all of the sudden. It feels kinda like my very self is dismantling or being submerged under thick murky water. I try to ignore it with a little micro-flarping. Like being a detective or a coin slinging cowboy doctor with a magical apprentice. I’m favored to that second one, but I just can’t get myself to start. The inertia of it is far too strong especially now that I'm trying to be a good sport about this whole thing. I float as slow as I can down to the shelter and pour all the water in my rations out into a makeshift pool

-Good work finding that monitor-
-You will find this terminal more useful here-
-So come on, get to it Terezi-

Chapter Text

Before I left I felt some sort of light flowing over the horizon. It felt like one of those light towers you sent me on your phone. I feel its distant remnants but it’s like something happened. All I can hope is that I'll be ready for when it comes for me.

Rikar’s a nice grub, you know. I find that klee is pretty resourceful. Apparently they have new pronouns here, I like it >:). The voice on the other side of the monitor has been sending intermittent messages all day. It’s essentially just leading me through a standardish session of sburb. They echo the same thing repeatedly.,/span>

-Until your third arrives this is gonna wait-

It’s getting to be pretty annoying but I’ll take all the company I can get. I keep hearing this faint voice in the back of my head. It rings of that light that I felt but in a different way. It has more of an anger behind it, or maybe surprise? If I think about it too long it starts to sting. Filling my head with nonsense.

OKAY WHAT THE FUCK. Oh shit. I’m actually back. I don’t have any idea what is happening with our mindful “friend.” But whatever it is has caused things to go wrong. She mentioned this relevant figure arriving and I figured it was the group from Earth C. That would be a minor inconvenience at most, like a stubbed toe or a UTI after the year 1928. However if I managed to contract a UTI at all in this state I’d honestly just let it run its course. Rose has higher odds than I do with the state of my power.

Okay that’s enough piss talk good god. Turns out it was her little girlfriend. And with Vriska’s power she’s been going behind my back. Terezi has some sort of vibe about her that makes her ignorant to my power of narrative recitation and creation. I feel sorry for her being stuck in the narrative kiddie pool but it’s annoying for us too. We can’t seem to pin her down. While I trust her to steer herself correctly, what I don’t trust is for her to have the only Deltritan on the planet. That puts the entirety of this second SWURB session in jeopardy because for as much as she knows, she is not the one calling the shots.

Even now I feel her weird aura pushing against me. She’s filling it with her own narration, an internal narration. Damn, she was dead on, it totally is her narration. Well that’s fine, she can have her fun for a little longer.

Rikar prods at me a couple times. Klee pulls me to my feet and says,

"MEss? E thEnk wI should kIIp playEng thI gamI."

"I- I guess you're right."

Now more than ever, I feel a hole burning in my pocket. John, you don't have to forgive me for what I did.

Chapter Text

Swurb isn’t really fun when it’s actually a game. I think I had fun originally because I was with my 11 closest acquaintances and I was 6. Rikar seems to agree with me, especially when the game seems to be actively built against klee at every turn. I try to take the grub under my wing, give klee someone who’s rooting for them. If there’s one thing Karkat was actually able to teach me; it’s that you can be incredibly incompetent and verbose as long as you have people cheering you on.

I think my anxiety with you is reaching a breaking point. It seems we can both feel it. I'm sitting by a makeshift pool letting Rikar recuperate.

“YIs?”

“1 D1DN’T S4Y 4NYTH1NG?”

“Sorry! E just fIlt lEkI you mEght nIId a... convIrsatEon.”

“HM.”

“WH4T H4PP3N3D 4T LOTAF”

“ThI watIr drEId up.”

“E survEvId bIcausI E was lucky.”

“My frEInd gavI mI a kIy to somI gamI”

“E thEnk E was thI only onI to IndId up hIrI.”

“HOW LONG H4S 1T B33N?”

“Only around 115 tIdal shIfts.”

“1S TH4T... LONG?”

“SomIwhat”

“1’M R34LLY SORRY GRUB. 1 KNOW HOW LON3LY TH1NGS C4N G3T.”

“No no, E nIvIr fIlt lonIly hIrI.”

“I lEkI the fIIlang.”

“BIsEdIs! My guardEan watches ovIr mI!”

“I-”

“ThIy carId so much.”

“E thank thIm IvIry day.”

When Rikar talks of a guardian the concept of a parent almost clicks. At least of some caring overseer figure. I would even almost call my Lusus a parent or guardian. However obviously there are key differences, as there always are with troll culture. As is signature with troll culture, Lusus relationships involved an intense amount of physical combat. It was how we showed we were worthy of the respect of being noticed.

“1S 1T 4LR1GHT 1F 1 T3LL YOU 4BOUT SOM3ON3?”

“...”

TIll mI about your frEInd.”“

“4LT3RN14 D1DN’T R34LLY H4V3 THE CONC3PT OF FR13NDS…”

Your Igg-CompEnAon?“”

“1S TH4T WH4T YOU C4LL LOV3RS?!?!”

“QuEt stallEng”

“H3R N4M3 W4S VR1SK4.”

W3 W3R3 S1ST3RS 1N 4RMS.”“

“SH3 M4D3 4 LOT OF FUCK3D UP MOV3S.”

“BUT I FORG4V3 H3R M1SG1V1NGS, TH3 M4NY TH4T TH3R3 W3R3.”

“B3C4US3 I THOUGHT TH4T 1N SOM3 WORLD, SOM3 T1M3. W3 COULD B3 H4PPY.”

“WH4T3V3R THAT M34NT”

“BUT WH3N TH1NGS ST4RT3D F4LL1NG 1NTO PL4C3, 1T T3RR1F13D M3.”

“SO 1 R4N.”

NOW 1’M RUNN1NG B4CK, HOP1NG SOM3WH3R3 OUT IN TH3 ST4RS 4BOV3.”“

“SH3 1S TOO.”

Rikar holds me tightly around the waist.

When I was blinded I think that was the first thing that clicked. That without some sort of divine intervention, no one would ever care about me again. Even in the Alternian sense, especially her. I think when it first happened I had to think of it as some sort of test. That I just had to show that I couldn’t be stopped even by blindness. It didn’t stop me, and what did that get me? This. Is that worth it, did I win? I don’t know, but I did it. She’s going to find me here and she’s going to fucking smile. Because I never got knocked down, none of this shit made me stop fighting.

“WhIn you fEnd hIr... cEn E mIIt hIr?"

I think she’d come around to it.

“SUR3, WHY NOT?”

“YIS!”

I turn to Rikar and give them a quick nub-five. I’m keeping this grub safe.

“GRUB! 1 TH1NK W3’R3 GO1NG TO MAK3 1T THROUGH TH1S”

“Ef wI do not though, I stAll thAnk we hEvI donI a good job.”

“TErEzI, E’m glEd Et was you who SAVED mI