#voodoostuck

>at which point the marker runs out, the letters become messy, purple blood.

sky is spoken too loud and the thunder up and gets blocking the motherfuckin stars

what if i listened to what the storms had to say for once

but no fuckin no they are too damn alive and i rest with the motherfuckin million laughs of the ghosts of my people and storms are too alive for all of us not like cold dirt and murky water and oil in pressure beneath the globe and the ancient motherfuckin carbon-dustblood of the stars bleeding out

my descendant has no horns but aspires to shove a spade in the earth and be a gravedigger graverobber undertaker pierrot to people who call us, the high motherfuckin subjugglators and laughsassins, they call us the ghede

it's fuckin frozen as a polar clawbeasts' left motherfuckin asscheek out in my dreambubble

here there is only heat and sun and too

            much motherfuckin

Reports reach the news.

The city is awake and alive and searching for you.

For a moment you stood atop a ruined and crashed float, holding a gaudy crown aloft. Fevered, mind fluxing you saw derse and new orleans all at once. Carapce cheered as mortals screamed or groaned as their lives bled out into the gutters.

You were so fast and so brutal with the other you jeering you, pushing you onward.

In a small flame from your destruction you hold out the crown, burning your fingertips and blackening the damn thing.

For a moment, you are Rex among the trashed festival.

Until a bullet buries itself with a sickening whistle-slosh into your shoulder.

You let loose a roar and face an onslaught of police, humans peppered with a few trolls, and you know fear.

You will die here.

With laughter like some kind of fucked up tolling funeral bell, slow and mocking, the mirror-you raises your shovel and drags the both of you into Derse to meet the crowds of impressed and entertained carapace.

You wear the black crown.

>BE THE BLACK KING

People celebrate and the muted roar of crowds in New Orleans filter through the stained walls of the room inhabited by yourself and the mirror-you.

A dog's choke-collar tightens around your neck and the vicious, tinier you gives the leash attached a few spiteful tugs to test.

You choke and splutter and snarl; there's barely anything recognizable about you after the weeks and weeks of methodical cruelty, you're a starving, raging beast painted in a rainbow of hues, soaking wet and cold, taunted, teased and broken to this point with pure calculation.

For the first time in a long time, you are lead out the door by that leash, tearing at the walls and trying to remain. You are a monster and nothing else, just like all the other timelines said you would be. You scare yourself, but at the same time you want to lash out at circumstance, bring down the bricks and concrete around you in a chaotic hail of rubble and debris.

You want to lash out to escape and leave and be somewhere else and forget all this bullshit, your mind is a shattered mess rustling around like broken glass needling the inside of your skull and sloshing around in your heart like a bad acid trip.

You barely notice yourself smashing your way through the celebrating crowds with clubs placed in your hands, you barely notice the trickster-creature riding piggyback with bitter-happy-unhinged laughter, you just know you are climbing a float, dislodging the costumed krewe performers and taking your place in the mad parade.

Subjugglator, people scream, what's a highblood that big doing here unmedicated. Freak. Filthy. So much fear and screams and you smell like blood and water and the mould that grows in drywall when buildings are abandoned and neglected.

But you are laughing.

All these little running people and the funny noises they make, all the colors and pretty plastic beads make you so damn happy. Just look at all this mirth! Just look at this festival fit for killer kings painted like clowns.

As one of the few left of your caste, you must celebrate. Celebrate for them all. You wrap beads around your monstrous claws and hurl another performer into the crowd, yelling for someone to catch it quick.

drip. drip.

you are still laying in four inches of bloody water.

the walls are scrawled with veves of the more fearsome loa, and some not recognizeable as earthen veves aside from their style. this is the same room you and dave stayed in when things started getting really bad, and you knew this because the memorial xXx for john as well as legba's sigil were still visible through the new bloody scrawls. no one seemed to realize this room existed anymore.

over the last few days the other you has told you so much about subjugglators, about the true alternia, and you have had no choice but to listen. to drink what he gave you. to eat what he gave you.

you are much bigger than you were; stress and a protein rich diet has seen to your final metamorphosis into an adult of your caste.

your name is gamzee makara and you very well might be a monster.

Hush, he says, whispers in the flavor of chloroform forcing sleep and seeds of dreams.

He found you round the corner when you couldn't find Dave and looking in a mirror was never more unsettling.

Hush, he says.

Go back to sleep, Derse will cradle souls to keep,

where the deathly acrid miasma seeps the smell of chemicals and bleach

your hood becomes so many colors drained from deaths of friends and brothers, and he wraps you in it with this sneering gentleness that you just can't take, you just can't take it.

Hush he says, don't be awake

and dream of the day

Your name is Dario Strider and you are the surviving beta of a failure turned into something good.

You are a fraction of your alpha self.

But not for much longer.

Clutching your cell phone (and your resolve) tightly, you wait at the appointed meeting spot Gamzee had texted you to go to to finally rejoin with your estranged other half. With a bitter tenderness you realized that those few short messages are the last time you will speak with the troll as "Dario". A good bye was not in order because by all technicality you won't be going anywhere, you'll just cease to be an separate individual, meld into a single consciousness.

Part of you doesn't want to go through with this, but that portion of your ego is selfish and swiftly silenced as muffled footsteps approach. Between the haggard silhouettes of abandoned, discarded factory warehouses you come face to face with yourself for the first time.

==>

Dave is quite obviously more unnerved by your presence than you of his, which is understandable since, from what you've gathered, the last encounter he had with an independent alternate led to his death and reluctant ascension to godhood. He stops a few feet in front of you, sizing you up. You realize you're doing the same and chuckle to yourself quietly, full well knowing you don't even need to guess the thoughts going through the masked blond's head. 

That said, it comes as no surprise to you when he informs you that he ditched Gamzee a few blocks back. Oddly relived, you thank him for sparing your short time boyfriendmatespritwhatever more grief. He shoots down your gratitude instantly, countering that some of the heartbreak has only just begun.

To that, you shake your head and chuckle more. What a damn pessimist.

The scenery warps, folds in on itself and remolds into an empty red city filled with speakers a big screen tvs. You don't even bat an eyelash this time as Dave brings you to his Medium, the pulsing din of the lava streams pushing into the ocean would drown out any more words the two of you would have to exchange. Luckily, it's an unspoken desire the both of you have to want to end this in a fair fight. No holding back, just brute, unquestionable closure. But it's still almost cruel.

Neither of you wants to win. Both of you don't want to lose. 

==> strife.

Swords drawn, you come at one another like a typhoon and a void, a boy at violent war with himself but one piece is already at peace. The final power struggle for identity between a ghost and a god begins, and The Land of Coast and Tempo trembles. 

( The ocean rises. Parts of the city fall and collapse. The volcano splutteringly erupts more.)

==> Be future Dario.

You cannot be future Dario, because in the future Dario Strider no longer exists.

==> PAST DARIO: BE DAVE IN THE FUTURE.

You are now Dave, complete, whole, and tired as fuck. Bleeding from Dario's parting gifts, you are awash with emotions you had forgotten you could even feel. It is wonderful and painful all at once. Uplifting and crushing.

The sea's foaming waves crash and break below you like hundreds of beating black crows' wings against the rocky shoreline. The water beckons to you, as always, and like always, you obey. Your eyes flutter, close, and you tumble limply through the air, collide with the ever shifting surface of the water.

And sink.

This isn't you giving up, you are not dying, not today. You're just taking a little rest, drifting down towards the sandy bottom that never gets closer. For now, you will literally sleep with the fish.

==>

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