#gamezi

The arrival of your species actually has nothing to do with the apocalypse. Sure, there are shit storms of enormous proportions—a lot of political scandal, a lot of short tempers, and a hell of a lot of rioting—but the apocalypse doesn't come until later. The humans act like it’s a legitimate alien invasion and not a cry for help from a race of people on the very edge of extinction. With the empress gone, taking most of your race with her, trolls are few and far between. If it hadn’t been for your sun threatening to consume all of you, your kind probably would have been fine sticking to Alternia. As it was, there was massive government collapse, frantic, panicked trolls from every corner of the hemospectrum sending the petty crime and not inconsiderable murder rate through the roof. As your sun swelled, more and more of your people died, until Feferi got a bunch of you together and herded you onto a spaceship. As heiress, many trolls were willing to listen to her. Many more saw her as the return of the Condesce, and were not. Those trolls were obliterated with the rest of your planet as the lot of you who left watched through the windows of your shitty ship. Some of you had tears streaming down your cheeks, you know that you did, and some watched blankly before turning away. Many more died on the journey through space, until you were officially an endangered species, maybe a thousand or so left. Then you arrived at earth, and the pink monkeys living there lost their shit. Your translators only did so much. The Alternian Empire had been one of the most powerful races in the galaxy for millennia—your knowledge of languages spanned galaxies, but the large spiral galaxy that earth was part of was not one of those. They were a primitive species, barely even having touched the stars, and hadn’t yet learned to fear the wide reaches of space. Their fear was strong, years of propaganda and apocalypse films running their course, but in the end, they accepted you. You had four unsteady sweeps before one of their doctors found some form of miracle cure and promptly released it into the atmosphere. She'd made one mistake—one huge mistake in the testing process. She'd tested the cure on human subjects, sure. What she forgot was to test it on trolls. The side effects were disastrous. Trolls went crazy, dropping dead within days and rising again like the dead had back home. These ones didn’t have creeping fungi or flowering plants growing through the cracks in their skin, but those of you who remembered your planet, who hadn’t been born on the ship to a dying Mother Grub—you knew. You tried to tell the humans, but they turned on you the moment the dead trolls started biting humans—started making the humans like them, passing the virus on like a simple cold. Trolls went near feral all over again, hiding in the dark of the night from the numerous humans who thought the solution was mass lynchings. Aradia perished in the first wave, rising again with a steaming hole through her skull and blank white eyes. Tavros followed after and Vriska after him. You hid in caves and sewer systems as the disease ran its course, humans growing more and more deadly for your kind. And then, it stopped. Well, nothing truly stops, but the madness came to a slow, grinding halt. The humans weren’t quite like you, there were enough of them left that they weren’t quite endangered, but their political world crashed and burned. Governments collapsed. Civilizations fell apart. Slowly, trolls emerged from their hiding places, and there weren’t enough humans left to tear you apart. Which is how you ended up at a bus stop when the second wave hits—you, your friends, and a small group of humans watching as the bus pulled up to the curb and a bunch of zombies spilled out. . One of the humans knows how to drive a bus, so that’s what the lot of you do. You cut down zombies, clear the vehicle, and you pile in. “Welp, that was shitty,” one of the humans says in the silence. You watch the sidewalks, the loping predatory creatures that stalk along the streets. Zombies hadn’t been sparse before, but the numbers had dwindled enough that they didn’t lurk on every street corner. It’s like before, during the first wave, and you all watch, mouths dry as a troll with sweeping horns rips apart a small tealblood as you pass. The human driving the bus snorts, raking her dark fingers through her long black hair. She’s bespectacled, eyes a shade between lime and jade. “Understatement, Dave.” There are four humans total, the eight of your friends that are still left, and a couple unfamiliar trolls huddling together near the back. Your stomach goes sour, and you wonder if any of them have been bitten. They aren’t, but when you realize that there’s still a zombie lurking between some of the seats, they’re the first to go down. You stab it in the eye with your sickle, but by then the other three trolls are turning. The human who’d spoken first—Dave, the green eyed one had called him—saves you. No one else was close enough, not even Feferi, whose fins are flared, the gold of her eyes tinted alarmingly red. She’s got her trident out, but the bus is small, and the seats are cumbersome. You take down the remaining zombies together, steel flashing as your sickles and his sword open throats. The back of the bus looks like a massacre by the time you’re done, stinking blood of various shades of green and yellow all over both of you. “Are you bitten?” he asks you as you heave for breath, one hand clenched to your bloodpusher. You glare at him. “Do you really think I wouldn’t have turned this sickle on myself if I was?” you growl, absentmindedly papping Feferi right in her bared fangs. She blinks, startled, but you don’t even care anymore. You’re done with this. You’ve lost your home, your lusus, and most of your race. You don’t give two shits who thinks you’re paleflirting around the bus as long as you don’t have to open up any more throats. You slump into a seat next to Gamzee, trying to ignore the way he pats at you, trying to check if you’ve been hurt. He’s not subtle; the two of you have been broken up since your planet broke apart. But you’re kind of okay with it, because his hands may not be papping you, his mouth might not be shushing you, but it feels nice anyway. You wonder if that’s the way humans feel. “I don’t know you, bro. Most people aren’t exactly the honorable type anymore,” the douche with the shades says, shrugging and sliding into a seat next to the other pale haired human. She blinks at you, like she’s curious. You bare your teeth back at her. “Don’t you think we should get rid of the bodies?” the fourth and final human asks, biting his lip with a ridiculous pair of beaver teeth. You’re too tired to really look to see where everyone is right now. Distantly you’re aware of Kanaya in the seat across from yours, flashing you looks in between glares at Gamzee’s hand that’s still on your waist. You bat at him and the hand moves away. “They won’t start rotting for another few hours,” Kanaya says. “By then we’ll be out of the city and can safely dump them without worrying about getting ambushed.” “The glowy broad is right,” the Dave human says, nodding all magnanimous like. It makes you want to growl. You don’t. “So, I take it everybody’s okay back there?” the green-eyed one asks, glancing over her shoulder. “Most of us, yes,” Feferi tells her, eying the mangled corpses. “Well then, we should probably introduce ourselves then,” the green-eyed human chirps back, eyes happily returned to the road. “I’m Jade! I probably would have been back on my island if I hadn’t visited these chumps when the first wave hit, but what can you do. There’s more adventure here anyway.” It goes around like that for some time, because apparently share-and-care hour is at hand. You learn that the pale-haired female’s name is Rose—that she liked black lipstick and someone named Lovecraft before the world went to hell. She liked psychology, she says, and Dave snorts, muttering something about how she still likes psychoanalysing people. The red one you already know as Dave, but he tells all of you that he was from Texas. He liked drawing shitty comics to post on the internet and ‘rapping’ which you figure is kind of like the human version of slam poetry. The blue one with the beaver teeth is John, and he’s the one to tell you that his group of friends had all come together to visit Rose when the outbreak happened. He’s worried about his dad back home and he’s apparently fond of shitty action movies starring some probably long dead human. And then it’s your turns. You don’t really think that it’s on purpose that you go in order of the fucked to hell and back hemospectrum, but that’s what happens. Feferi tells them a little about what she and Eridan have been doing the past few sweeps, that they’ve been living in an underground sewage system before surfacing and meeting up with the rest of you in the last perigree or so. Eridan is oddly subdued, introducing himself quietly. It’s not like him, and you worry about it for maybe twelve seconds before you decide that you don’t give a shit. Gamzee regales them about the mirthful messiahs for so long that you have to cut him off before him and the Dave human end up slamming together. Equuis goes, then Terezi, who doesn’t speak for so long that you suck in a pained breath, realizing she’s waiting for a voice that won’t come. You don’t actually know what happened with them, just that she and Sollux were living off in some cave somewhere with Aradia when shit went down. You don’t know if Vriska was actually responsible for Aradia’s death, just that whatever happened ended with Terezi’s blade through Vriska’s eye socket. Sollux and Terezi don’t really talk about it. After Terezi is Kanaya, Nepeta, and Sollux. Then there’s just you. “Karkat Vantas,” you say shortly. “Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away, I liked shitty rom-coms and fucking up computers, as the douchebag with the duality complex will surely attest to in great detail, because he is an asshole. I used to dream about being a threshecutioner but that kind of failed when my planet blew up. Now I'm here, fondling my shameglobes while the dead prowl the streets on a shitty bus with you pathetic fucks. Now that the meet and greet is over, where the fuck are we even going?” They all stare at you. You slap your hand against your brow, a headache coming on already. You’re pretty sure they have no fucking idea. . “Well, we should probably go somewhere that’s sparsely populated,” Rose says, all cool and confident like she’s not even worried. Hell, maybe she’s not. You agree. Going to a place with less flesh eating monsters sounds like a grand idea, but you’re pretty sure the lot of you are going to have a hard time finding such a place. “The sewers…” John starts to say, cutting himself off when Eridan and Kanaya both snarl. “The sewers aren’t going to work,” Sollux says. You almost miss his lisp from way back when, before Eridan had knocked all his teeth out in a particularly nasty black brawl. “They’re overrun. Have been for awhile now. That’s why we finally came back to the surface. It was that or die.” “The forest would be purrfect,” Nepeta puts in from where she’s balanced in a very precarious position next to Equius. She looks comfortable though, so her moirail apparently doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to move her. “Lots of trees would purrvide an excellent vantage point. We’d have the high ground and be safer since I’m purrty sure the zombies catnot climb trees.” Dave snorts. “You know who else can’t scale trees like little weeaboo catgirls? Humans.” You all blink at him, but it’s Feferi who ventures out and says what you all are thinking. “Seariously?” “We were informed that you humans had descended from apes. Were we given incorrect information?” Kanaya asks, a frown marring her brow. “Our species are, in fact, descendants of apes. However, much has been lost over the centuries. We can climb trees, we have the dexterity required to do so, but without the aid of claws or tails, it is quite difficult for us. It isn’t a bad idea, but long term we would do better on the ground,” Rose tells her, leaning around Dave to meet Kanaya’s eyes. None of you are used to someone meeting your eyes so frankly, but Kanaya takes it well enough, simply looking back thoughtfully before nodding. “Well fuck,” you say, because that kind of sums up the situation. . In the end, you just drive. You take old human highways that had been shut down after the first wave and back roads so cracked and overrun by nature that you’re concerned you’re going to drive right off a cliff. “We should probably stop somewhere for gas and a map,” John says when you pass a sign welcoming you to Pennsylvania. Jade hums, tiredly, her head slumped back against the head rest. You’re too far towards the back of the bus to see her well, but you can read her body language. She’s exhausted. “Our cargo isn't smellin' too great either,” Eridan puts in, and you glance at him, surprised. He’s been more or less silent since the lot of you met up, just a pale, bedraggled shadow at Feferi’s side. He slants you a look, like he knows what you’re thinking, and quirks a wry smile. “I aint dead, Kar. Just don’t much fancy talkin’ lately.” You snort. He’s a couple seats ahead of you, but you still wanna pat him on the back or something. That’s always been your issue, you give entirely too many shits. “There’s a town coming up,” Jade puts in, even her voice sleepy sounding. You wonder if it’s just the fatigue from driving, or if she’d been injured at all when boarding the bus. It had all been kind of touch and go there, and you’d been paying too much attention to your team to keep an eye on the humans. “Rural, from the looks of it. Probably a small population. It’ll be our best bet for awhile.” None of you really give a straight answer, but when she turns onto the exit, nobody protests either. . There are four zombies at the gas station—a troll and a human wandering around outside, another human behind the register, and a surprise lurking around the aisles. In the sweeps since the first outbreak, convenience stores and the like have come a long way. Bulletproof glass got bought up like it was going out of style, and some humans managed to take advantage of the total government collapse. You’re not entirely sure how they kept oil trading going, but then again, you’d been in a sewage system at the time. Apparently this gas station wasn’t one of the ones that got an upgrade. It’s easy to take care of the dead with so many people. Feferi spears the zombies outside before many of you can even blink, Nepeta gets the cashier, and the only reason any of you even know about the fourth is because of Sollux’s shriek and Terezi’s cackle of laughter, the snick of a blade being unsheathed and the thunk of a head falling to the floor. Terezi comes back around with a dripping blade and a shit-eating grin. You roll your eyes at her and resume grabbing as much canned goods as you can possibly hold. Human food tastes like shit and canned food is even worse, but you’ve learned not to be picky. “Found a map!” John shouts. Apparently there’s a little stand with about a dozen maps of the U.S. You watch as he scoops up three of each. Dave and Gamzee are guarding the bus as Jade gasses up, the rest of you designated to get various things. Hopefully, by the time you’re done, you’ll have some basic survival shit, then you can band together and dump the corpses. And maybe Jade can teach you all how to drive a bus. It can’t be much more complicated than driving a car, which means the humans won’t have such an issue. Considering the rest of you never learned to drive... well, that might be a bit harder. Rose edges around the aisle, a basket held daintily in her hand piled high with all the standard medical shit this gas station’s stocked with. Pain killers, predominantly, because that’s what you’re gonna need most. Some shit for cold and flu, some pink stuff for the stomach. She’s even got some condoms and lube stacked on top of everything, like an afterthought. She raises an eyebrow when she catches you staring. You splutter, cheeks gone red, and finish slamming the cans into your basket. The two of you set off in the direction of the bus, leaving the rest in the store to finish what they’d been assigned to grab. Dave is yawning, sword slack in his hand, back to the two of you. You’d think him careless if it weren’t for the way he twitched towards you when he heard your footsteps, then, realizing how you were, throwing a look over his shoulder and firing off a sloppy salute. “Got the shit?” he drawls, and you think he might be leering a little bit, but with those shades, you can’t tell for shit. Rose snorts, raising the basket for him to inspect. Predictably, he goes for the condoms. “And who exactly are these for?” he asks. “For whoever may need them,” Rose answers calmly, and for some reason, this makes Jade giggle. “You know trolls can’t use those, right, Rosie-Posie? They never got around to making troll condoms before the world went crazy.” You fight down the urge to laugh in their faces. It’s the same urge you’d gotten the first time you heard that the humans were trying to manufacture condoms for your species. You scoff, and all three of the humans turn to you, eerily in unison. You wonder where Gamzee's wandered off to. “It wouldn’t have worked even if they had the time,” you say, your face going only slightly red. “We’re… not exactly the same as you guys. Just. Trust me, it wouldn’t have worked.” You try to imagine fitting that latex sock over your bulge—of it keeping in all the genetic material, most of which would have come spilling out of your nook anyway. You fail miserably. “Besides, we can’t catch your weird sex diseases and I’m pretty sure trolls don’t have any.” Well, that’s not really true. There used to be rumors that sleeping with a sea-troll could turn your junk purple, but Sollux had confirmed that that wasn’t true. Twice over. “Fascinating,” Rose says, dry as can be. She’s mocking you, you’re mostly sure. It makes you bristle with irritation. “Anywaaaaaaay,” Jade giggles, snapping the little door shut and putting the pump down. “All done. Don’t know what John and your pals are still doing in there, but I don’t suppose any of you wanna help me clear out the corpses?” . You clear out the corpses and hose the back of the bus down, until all the smears of green and brown are gone. John hangs a shit ton of those artificial scent things around the bus and the scent of blood is drowned in the overwhelming smell of vanilla. You take turns driving the bus around the town. As you predicted, the humans fare much better than the rest of you do. After Eridan’s turn at the wheel, Jade all but forbids any of you from driving unless she’s awake and watching. You sleep in the bus, still parked in the gas station parking lot, and only wake three times to the sound of zombies thumping into the sides. Good thing that buses are durable. . Two perigrees is how long it takes to get used to the humans. Two perigrees and it’s like you’ve known them for sweeps. You still don’t trust each other completely, and you probably never will, but you wake up in the mornings to Jade instructing a sweating Equius on how to not flip the bus when avoiding shit in the road, Nepeta perched on the seat behind them, giggling. You witness Feferi accidentally on purpose papping Rose full in the face, her smile going sharp around the edges when Rose just stares back at her. You snort, still half asleep, and think that Feferi’s probably clawing up the wrong tree on that one if the way Rose has been looking at Kanaya lately is any indication. You eat dinner out of cans, tell stupid jokes, and kill zombies together. Two perigrees is how long it takes you to realize that all the humans except for Jade are kind of assholes and that Dave has either been flirting black with you or is just really determined to piss you off. It’s too early on to even think about quadrants, especially with humans, but sometimes you catch yourself eying his lips when the two of you are arguing, thinking about what it would be like to bite them. It isn’t difficult, accepting them amongst you. . Predictably, that’s when everything goes to shit. . You’ve stopped in a suburb somewhere in Arkansas, parked alongside some really huge houses that none of you have been brave enough to inspect just yet, when Eridan blinks beside you and says, “Hey Kar, I think there might be live ones in there.” You turn, just barely catching a glimpse of fingers letting go of some curtains. Then, you watch in astonishment as a tiny human just wanders out the front door, a grin on his little features. “I put it in my mouth, but I didn’t inhale,” Dave is saying, which you’re pretty sure is some kind of joke, but who the fuck knows with him. You shoosh him anyway, smacking him in the arm just as the tiny kid sidles up to the door and knocks, polite as you please. Jade is the one to open the door, leaning over cautiously as the kid bounces up the steps. He looks around at all of you like you’re human christmas come early. “Hey there,” Jade whispers, her voice gone all tiny and soft. “Where are your parents?” The kid bounces a little. “In the living room!” he squeaks back, still grinning widely. “Do they know you’re out here?” John asks warily, getting to his feet and squeezing past Dave to get to the aisle. The kid shrugs, which is all the warning you get before the dad comes tearing out after him. It’s not pleasant at first. There are a lot of accusations thrown around and most of your group are visibly fighting not to draw a weapon, but everything kind of eases up when the kid starts up with the crocodile tears. “I just wanted to help them,” he sobs, and the dad visibly melts. You will never not be creeped out by the human bonds between parent and offspring. “Hey, hey,” the dad soothes, gathering the kid into his arms. “It’s okay. We’ll help them. They can… shower. Maybe sleep on a carpet instead of uncomfortable seats.” He throws the rest of you an apologetic look. “Sorry. We don’t get a lot of living visitors out here.” “Are you sure you’re okay with letting us into your home?” Jade asks, biting nervously at her lip. “We’ll be fine on the bus.” The rest of the tension melts away when the dad sees the look on Jade’s face. “No offense meant, kids, but this bus reeks and we still have running water. It’s the least I can do.” . Michael apparently lost his wife a little before the initial outbreak. Car crash, he tells the rest of you, gathering his son close. Alex is all he’s got left. “I still can’t believe he allowed us inside,” Kanaya mutters to you. “Neither can I,” you whisper back, eyes hard. . Sweeps ago, a human like this one invited you into her home. It was well before the first outbreak, but still not long enough after you’d landed on the planet to be fully trusted. Your group had mostly split up after you landed—Feferi, Eridan, and Kanaya going off to be political with the humans; Equius and Nepeta taking to the forests; Sollux, Terezi, and Aradia vanishing into the ether while Vriska and Tavros went to go have adventures or something. You’d been left with just Gamzee, and well, it was awkward. So you’d left him for a little while, telling him you’d be back eventually. The human was a middle-aged woman and she’d smiled at you from her car window, asking if you needed somewhere to stay for the night. You were cold, wet, and tired. You’d accepted. Waking up that night to the woman fondling your nook hadn’t been very fun, less so when you realized her husband was in the room as well. You’d left mostly unscathed—jumping out of a third story window isn’t the best idea, but it was what you had at the time and it had gotten you away. Michael doesn’t seem much like that, but you never know. You’ve learned not to be so trusting. There are three bathrooms, four if you count the one that consists of only a load gaper, so you have to take turns. The girls go first, mostly because they’ve strong-armed the rest of you into backing down. Feferi takes the master bathroom upstairs, because according to Michael, there’s a huge bathtub that his wife had installed. It isn’t the same as swimming, but you can tell that Feferi is pleased anyway. Michael offers you snacks as you wait. Dave accepts a juice box, noisily slurping on the straw, smirking when your hands sporadically twitch in your lap. “Dibs on the orgy bath,” he says, flinging the juice box at your face when Feferi emerges, clean and relieved looking. You watch him go, teeth bared, eyes narrowed, but when he gets to the top of the stairs he turns back around, nearly out of your eyesight, and smirks. The come-hither motion he makes is unmistakable. You gape at him until he disappears from view. “Do you need an engraved invitation?” Rose asks you, and you startle. You hadn’t realized she was out of her bath much less right next to you. She gives you this look, one pale brow arched, her hair hanging damp and limp around her flushed cheeks. “My brother has been flirting with you for weeks now and from what I’ve observed, you aren’t exactly unreceptive.” You stare at her until she rolls her eyes and shoves you a little, in the direction of the stairs. “Go,” she says, offering you a wicked smile. You go. . “Took you long enough,” Dave breathes when you cautiously ease open the bathroom door. The room is full of steam, probably has been since Feferi got out, and the water is already half full. Which is where Dave is currently, sprawled back in the water and smirking at you, a hand on his dick. It isn’t the first time you’ve seen a human bulge. You had to do a lot of sketchy stuff to stay alive over the years, stayed in a lot of shitty places. You might not have slept with a human, but you’ve seen them fuck—you know how different shit is. For the first time, a frisson of unease creeps up your spine. What if you’re incompatible? What if he looks at your alien junk and laughs? “What are you waiting for?” he hisses from between his teeth, toeing off the faucet. The silence is deafening. “I’ve been on a bus with my sister, my best friend, my ex-girlfriend, and a bunch of aliens for the last few months. If you make me wait any longer I’m probably going to cry and that will be the furthest from cool ever—mmph.” While he’s rambling, you shuck your clothes and slide right into the tub, water sloshing over the sides as you crawl into his lap and lean down to bite those stupid lips of his. He makes a choked sound against your lips, so you bite him again, harder this time. He bites back. The last time you had sex was back on the ship. Technically you’d lost your virginity to Nepeta a month before your planet exploded, but you almost didn’t count that. The two of you had been scared and she’d been in your neighborhood, so you spent one spectacular night together, her stuffing your nook nice and tight and filling pail after pail until you couldn’t see straight anymore. The last time you actually had sex was an incredibly strange affair that involved Feferi, Eridan, and a lot of quadrant flipping. So you’ve had sex. You know how it works. Know exactly where to dig your claws to get your partner to mewl—where to bite to make them hiss. What you don’t actually know is how to be with a human. If you didn’t hate him so much, you’d probably just have given up the second you realized that the things that would make a troll come buckets (hah) might actually eviscerate a human. It’s awkward. Terribly so, for the first twenty minutes of almost-foreplay you’ve got going on. “Dude, not so hard,” he hisses, flinching away from where you've got your claws digging into his shoulderblades. You snarl. His eyes are as red as yours—you’d known that beforehand—zombie-infested nights means that it isn’t conducive to hinder your vision any, which meant that when the sun went down, Strider’s shades came off, no matter what. But it’s different, seeing them go hot with pleasure, pupils blowing wide so much differently than yours. You get something worked out in the end, him stroking your bulge with one hand (too gentle, too red), two fingers of his other hooked into your nook as you keen above him, until you’re wet and dripping enough that it doesn’t quite split you open when you sink back down onto his dick. It still hurts—way more than it ever did with Feferi’s giant bulge inside of you, but Dave is surprisingly good about it, scraping his teeth against your throat until you forget the pain in your nook and snarl in his face, biting and tugging at his lips as he experimentally thrusts into you. It feels weird—really weird—but even if the slide of him inside you is nothing like the lashing of a troll bulge, too bestial, like those hoofbeasts mating in the dry season that Equius had always drooled over, it's still kind of nice. After several moments of this, it starts to feel really good, even. “Yeah, so, just so you know, I’m totally not gonna last very long here. The Strider train has been at rest for way too long, bro, all those red lights fuck up your brake lines to hell and back and—” “Oh my god, shut up and fuck me.” It doesn’t take long for either of you. Your genetic material makes the ablution trap look like a murder scene and Dave laughs for ten full minutes before you dunk him in it, face first. . You emerge, actually washed, to the sounds of shouting. Dave’s laughter is snuffed out like a candle flame, the both of you going silent, straining to hear. There aren’t any screams, so you’re pretty sure zombies aren’t involved. That many people shouting though is bound to catch the undead’s attention. Dave is blessedly silent, drawing his sword as you draw your sickles, creeping down the hallway. Eridan and Sollux are shouting at each other again, which is almost enough to have you drop your weapons and start shouting back as well. Dave snaps out and grabs your wrist before you can. When you glance at him, he just shakes his head. You can’t make out what they’re saying. In the end you don’t need to. It doesn’t matter what they’re saying—what matters is the zombie that smashes through the window and attaches itself to Nepeta’s shoulder. She shrieks and turns to slash at it, her claws going straight through it’s neck and all the way through the spinal column. It gurgles and slumps, but the damage has been done, green blood trickling down her arm. Suddenly, it is very quiet. “Fuck,” you hiss. Once you’ve been bitten, you have seconds—maybe a minute or two before you start to amplify. Her eyes have gone all shiny, staring at the bite like she’s not really seeing it. After another moment, her shoulders slump. She turns to Equius, her eyes pleading. “Please,” she whispers, tottering towards him on shaky legs. His arms are shaking as he reaches out to catch her. You have no idea when you got down the staircase or where Michael and his kid are, but you’re there to see it when she starts jerking in his arms, the change sweeping through her body. “Please,” she hisses, eyes dark, and he makes this one last mournful sound, folding his entire body around her, hands coming up to cradle her head. The sound her neck makes when he snaps it is loud, but not as loud as the noise he makes afterward, huge and awful; broken, as he cradles her body close. . You leave Michael and his son that night. Not even the promise of feathery guest beds can tempt you into staying in the place where you lost one of your own. . Three days later, Equius gets sloppy when he’s putting down a couple walkers. You put him down. None of you are really sure if he did it on purpose or not. You don’t talk about it. . The first time that you say fuck it and end up rutting with Dave frantically in the back of the bus, only Rose is awake, pointedly keeping her eyes on the road and her hands on the wheel. The second time you’re moderately sure that a couple others are, but you don’t give a fuck. A day after that you wake up to the sounds of Kanaya and Rose kissing wetly a few seats back. You don’t really have it in you to hold it against them, not when you did worse than that. It starts a trend, kind of. When people are exchanging sloppy makeouts in the back of the bus, everyone is supposed to studiously ignore it. You still catch a couple glances every now and then, the worst of which is Terezi and Gamzee tearing into each other, blood smeared on their lips and teeth bared in identical snarls. You’re kind of jealous, that they can tear into each other like that and not die—but you’re pretty sure you’re off and on flipping red for Dave, so it’s not like it matters much anyway. . The night that Eridan gets bitten, no one notices quickly enough and he manages to tear holes into Kanaya and Feferi before he goes down. Ironically enough, it’s Kanaya who kills him, sawing him in half the second she gasps back to ‘life’. “So, does this mean that I’m infected now?” she asks, examining the new injury. You ponder the question, feeling sick to your stomach. Would rainbow drinkers who’d been bit carry the virus inside of them, dormant and waiting? You don’t wake to Kanaya and Rose kissing that night. . Gamzee vanishes somewhere in Florida. You wait for him for three days before you have to give up. You watch out the widows the whole time, Terezi a quiet presence at your side. “I hated him so much,” she says, quiet. She doesn’t talk to you much. You fucked that up a long time ago. You miss her. “I still pitied him,” you confess, snorting when your voice comes out rough. “That pitiful fuck.” You don’t say another word, but you do sit side by side, hands clasped, staring out the window. . Sometimes you’re jealous of the humans—that you’ve lost half your numbers and they haven’t lost any. You ignore the anger, because they’re a part of you now. They aren’t outsiders. They’re just as much part of your group as Nepeta or any of the others were. . “So what now?” Jade asks one day. She looks tired, the skin beneath her eyes bruised grey as she slumps against Sollux's side. He's got one arm around her and another arm around Terezi. He hadn't taken Feferi and Eridan's deaths well at all—losing two quadrants in one fell swoop must have been painful. “We can’t do this forever. As awesome as post-apocalyptic roadtrips are, this is clearly not working.” Everyone is silent for a moment, before Dave shifts against you. His eyes lift to yours and you blink at him, because there's an idea blooming to life there. You catch on the second his mouth opens, remembering something Jade said before—how she was from a small, uninhabited island in the middle of the Pacific. You grin, half delirious, and cuddle into his side, almost purring. “Hey Jade,” he drawls, quiet. “Any chance you can fly a plane?”