#tsgact3

You’ve never been aboard the bad ship Mindfang before. Appreciated it, yeah, Vriska may be a loose cannon but she’s your rebellion’s loose cannon and good loose cannons are hard to find. But the Mindfang is an overclocked shit midden. You are content that you can run away from trouble when trouble finds you, but you’re not content that this garbage sarcophagus has more than a one-star rating for Ship To Not Explode.

Your shame glands are pumping unmercifully as your moirail carries you from the medblock. Look at him. He’s unnecessarily pacified. Everyone will be able to tell! You’re glad that there are no members of the crew around to look at you and know you for a gigantic pale ho-bag, but also disappointment that nobody is viewing you in your moment of conciliatory virility knowing you for what you are, which is a gigantic pale ho-bag. You catch yourself halfway wanting Nepeta before your common sense reconnects.

The Mindfang is dark and very cold. Gamzee’s arms are thin and bony and warm. You’re still disoriented and half your skull is numb, and you’ve forgotten something. Someone? Misalignment nagging at your hindbrain. Something you need and you don’t have --

You get distracted by your fucking underwear.

--SHOW LOG--

I KNOW YOU CAN FUCK OFF!

DON'T YOU DARE MAKE ME YOUR REDEEMER. THE REDEEMER RESERVOIR IS FULL, YOU HEAR ME? TOOT TOOT! EVERYONE OUT THE SAVIOR POOL. OR YOUR EXECUTOR EITHER, YOU RIDICULOUS DRAMA MAVEN. OH MY GOD, YOU SELFISH, TWINKLE-FACED TOOL.

MY NAME IS KARKAT VANTAS, BULGELEPER.

AND I’M YOUR BEST FRIEND.

...

:o(

oh love you don’t even know what i done. 

i don’t even know where i’m at. don’t even know who i’m at any more, you get me? i use you so ill. i use you so motherfuckin ill.

wasn’t no miracle ever coming, my dear, i got the necessary blame. can’t chill any more, can't get my remembrance on how. wish you’d get real salty with me. 

MY PUSHER IS DEAD CINDEROUS.

just don't know how to feel you any more invertebrother.

...

GAMZEE?

Huh.

You’d somehow thought love would be a release.

...

SHOOSH.

Then again you’d also thought that you’d lose your papping virginity to the gentle patter of acid rain on the windowledge, under a big quilt.

He kneels horn and shoulder above your recuperacoon.

This is the opposite of how this was meant to go. You thought you'd someday swagger into a room and use cool sickle moves to take down persecuting Highbloods, or preferably persecuting Highblood robots because the Messiah pukes at blood, sorry faithful, and come jelly-to-jelly with your moirail. Stop. Stay still as love altered time. Stride towards each other in slo-mo before you shooshpapped, tentatively at first and then with growing sensuality and confidence. It would be so romantic that your later best-selling biographical film would have to cut it to get a rating of PG-13 (pupescent grubs will feel thirteen sweeps of trauma).

You are furious that instead, you’ve learned to fake bravery.

--SHOW LOG--

SORRY.

FOR NOT RECOGNIZING YOU, I MEAN. YOU’VE JUST CHANGED. A LOT. FROM. YOUR PROFILE PICTURE. NAMELY BECAUSE YOUR PROFILE PICTURE WAS OF A PIE AND A SOCK.

SO.

YOU RESCUING ME, THAT CERTAINLY WAS A THING I HAVE NO APPARENT RECOLLECTION OF. BUT THANKS? IT WASN’T THAT I DIDN’T EXPECT YOU TO, BUT I’M WELL AWARE THAT YOU MUST HAVE HAD TO PULL OFF SOMETHING PRETTY FUCKING AMAZING TO GET ME RIGHT OUT OF ECHO SIDE. MAYBE YOU COULD. RELATE DETAILS. OF THAT. SOMETIME. AT YOUR DISCRETION. GAMZEE. WOW, I NEVER ACTUALLY SAID YOUR NAME MUCH TO YOU, AM I PRONOUNCING IT CORRECTLY?? GAMZEE? GAMZEE. GAMZEE. JUST TELL ME AT ANY POINT WHICH YOU PREFE

  Gamzee Makara, quite gently, clasps your mitts around his throat.

--SHOW LOG--

come on sufferer.

FREE HIT GRATIS AND FOR FUCKING NOTHING, O SCION OF THE SIGNLESS SUFFERER.

and don’t you know you will be my measure, even in the silent land where i will god damn go?

He’s the size of a small, clown-shaped building. More of your blood is on him than is inside your body.

You’d never imagined Gamzee servitor of the Dark Carnival. The Dork Carnival, maybe. You dreamed him in elbows and stupid pants. This guy, he’s -- he’s a caricature, he’s the apex hope predator. Highblood centerfold. He makes Tavros, who could hand out an armful of passive-aggressive handwritten invites to the gun show, look like nothing. And he’s not even beefloaf, his muscles are parabolic filigree for his bones. You’re hit with the smell of stale sweat, blood and vomit, and hot body in unwashed clothes. 

He looks like the Grand Highblood. A small, stupid speck within you wants him to be familiar on his own terms, not those ones; you dumbfuck adolescent, you’re searching for anything that will invite moirail instinct. Instead you’re provided with only one biological mechanism, which is the urge to produce a vile stench so he won’t eat you.

--SHOW LOG--

dO YOU WANT TO BE LEFT ALONE,

uNATTENDEDLY ALONE,

You need to say: Under no circumstances, you galling nookscourge! Do not leave me alone! I don’t think I can shit myself sufficiently to get disregarded as a food source! Have you beheld his meteor-sized hands? Fucker, do you see those veritable strangleshovels?? Stay like I’m Vriska Serket and I’m sexually available, you emotionally callous shuntblister!

You wake up in a block you’ve never seen before, and WOW! THE SIDE OF YOUR PAN. THUNDERING SHOCKSHITS THIS PAIN IS SO BAD AS TO BE ACTUALLY INTRIGUING. THIS SENSATION IS NOT FUCKING AROUND WITH YOU, NO SIR.

Though you wait patiently, your skull does not stave in on itself with a shrill whistle. You can only see out of one socket. The other one feels gummed-up and acutely sore, so you leave it alone and view the new world through one righteously pissed-off squint. This squint falls on Tavros Nitram.

He has all four limbs attached (two artificial) and a set of fancy fucking flight appendages (both real). You take a moment to realise that the sticky sensation isn't viscera, but good strong medical sopor. Aradia’s nowhere to be seen -- fickle fucking phantom she is -- but you conclude that Tavros's presence means you’re saved.

Tavros Nitram is your REVOLUTIONARY ALLY, sort of. The direct descendant of the Summoner, a freedom-fervid psycho with wings and a penchant for animal whispering, made him revered by the Signlessites and secretly beloved by the lusii-crazed CAVALREAPERS. Both of you have physical traits that marked you for slow deaths by the claw of the Empire, and both of you are connected inexorably to the Cult. Both of you were headed for successful careers and rippling abdominal muscles, or at least the latter would have happened to you had you not had a number of extremely brutal life incidents which excuse you entirely so you don’t need to feel insecure, which you don’t!!

Tavros is idealistic, courageous, considerate, a real trollitarian. He just has a couple of personality traits that make him awful.

--SHOW LOG--

hI kARKAT, WELCOME TO THE mINDFANG,

hOW ARE YOU DOING, uH, bUDDY,

dO YOU NEED ANY MORE PAIN RELIEF,

NITRAM, DO RIPPERWASPS STING???? I WANT DRUGS! I WANT EVERY SINGLE HALLUCINOGEN, ANTI-INFLAMMATORY AND NARCOTIC YOU CAN CRAM DOWN MY DRIPPING MAW. YOU SEE, I FEEL LIKE I AM BEING ACTIVELY MAULED BY A CHOLERBEAR.

i THINK i MISLEAD YOU, soRRY,

i’M NOT ACTUALLY ALLOWED TO GIVE YOU MEDICINE BUT i CAN OFFER A COURSE OF HOLISTIC HOPBEAST THERAPY INSTEAD,

IS THIS WHERE I TOUCH A

iT’S WHERE YOU TOUCH A HOPBEAST,

You decline. Happily, your middle finger still works.

HOW DID I ESCAPE FROM THE GRAND HIGHBLOOD? WHAT ABOUT THOSE CLOWNS PERFORMING SORDID SUBJUGGLATOR EXPERIMENTS ON ME? HAVE WE HEARD FROM GAMZEE AND TEREZI?

sO,

uM,

fUNNY COINCIDENCE HERE,

Tavros tells you the funny coincidence.

Seems like you're coming around!

SEEMS LIKE THIS WAS A COMPLETELY SHITTY IDEA

--SHOW CLOWN CAPTIVITY LOG--

ok.

ok girl you just fuckin COMMIT TO IT.

but if he has harm --

L1ST3N YOU L1TTL3 SH1T, DO3S TH1S TROLL LOOK UNH4RM3D TO YOU???

if he dies --

TH3N TH3 PL4N R3M41NS!

1F H3 D13S 1 4M T4K1NG YOU W1TH M3

Reality gives you a brisk caltrop rub-down in the form of your OTHER BEST FRIEND.

You have a lot of best friends and they are all socially contextual. This one is hard to mistake. Though you have numerous friends that grant you very high social cachet -- including luminaries like SARCASTIC HACKJERK and a PUPAHOOD MAYBESPRIT and the PERENNIALLY ABSENT MOIRAIL WHOSE ABSENCE CANNOT HURT YOU ANYMORE BECAUSE YOU ARE VERY EMOTIONALLY MATURE -- only one of this vibrant social circle is a DEAD SIX-SWEEP-OLD.

Your name is KARKAT VANTAS and you have been SEEING DEAD PEOPLE FOR SOME TIME NOW. To nobody’s surprise, dead people are some bullshit.

--SHOW GHOST LOG--

it isnt y0ur time t0 die the immutable death

missi0n parameters say n0

i mean missi0n parameters are me and i say n0 and i ap0l0gize if y0u arent 0k with that

believe me n0b0dy w0uld be m0re relieved if y0u were dead than me!

w0w that came 0ut wr0ng?

i ap0ltergeist

s0rry b00 i am g0ing t0 assume y0u get the spirit 0f what i mean 0u0

For instance, someone fucking deliver you from these awful ghost puns.

y0u are ab0ut t0 be in awful pain

but y0u kn0w a l0t ab0ut pain n0w i think

You want to ask her if you’re in enemy hands. Like it matters: the suicide tab Sollux placed on your back molar got yanked out by the Grand Highblood. He’d seemed personally offended. Your skull was cradled in one of his gigantic clownflippers for the longest time, him keening until you thought he was weeping, and that’s a memory you’ll exorcise if you have to shove a claw file up one nostril and dig around yourself.

She seems to understand your wharblgarbling --

karkat that questi0n is a bit of a... b0ner

Memory lurches drunkenly forth. There’s the supplies locker, filled with nutrition grit. There’s the jury-rigged cloaking phasmids the nerds on Imperator bred, all with sweaty assurances that they’d last you in an emergency. Fat fucking lot of good that did you. Fat fucking lot of good that did them.

They’re dead now. They all took their weapons and went unafraid to die the moment you got hit with traction jelly, and kissed their wrists at you like the brave witless buttwipes they were. Everyone who acted like you were their salvation and not someone uniquely suited to shit his shame garments, or shit theirs too if they wanted.

The Assignation, they said. The Holy Invectivus, they said. The Signless, they said.

--SHOW ??? LOG--

-- our FILTHY PAWS off hi --

-- X4CTLY UP TO PL4Y W1TH J3LLY 3NUCL34T1ON! 1F YOU DONT HOLD H1M DOWN 1 --

Nope!

Fuck clowns. You’re officially outie.

karkat

hey karkat