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Three Short of 19	By : Ariamaki Category: Web Comics > Homestuck Views: 1738 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Homestuck, or any characters therein. They belong to Andrew Hussie. I am making no profit from this story.

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- 1-Three Short of 19
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Three Short of 19

OR: A Story In Which The Principle Characters Are Twelve Trolls And Four Humans All Of Whom Are Former Players Of The Game Called Both Sgrub and Sburb Who Are Living Together In The Veil For Several Months As Part Of A Cunning Plan To Defeat Their Hated Foe (But Not That Kind Of Hate (Well, Maybe For Karkat But I Am Rambling Now)) And Spend Their Times In Leisure And Pleasure Thanks To The Human Talent Called Ingenuity.

----- Three Short of 19, Part 1-- Utter Chaos / Mutual Understanding-----

The sparks of white light fell off of his vision, and he stumbled forward in his dizziness-- Feet clacking from the smooth stone disc to the cold metal tiles, and with a start, John Egbert realized he was the first human to actually step foot here. Shaking off the weirdness of transportalization, he looked up to the small sea of gray faces, a dozen expectant and exploratory glances. He had talked to them all, or close, and here they were...

The sheer variety in their appearances was stunning... Quickly panning his eyes, he saw a tall beefy one in cracked square sunglasses, a thin arrogant-looking one with a purple streak and fins on his face, a cute girl with similar fins and a tiara, a lithe girl with one of those cat-hats, a rather bombed-out looking one with huge horns and face paint, one with robotic legs and even more ridiculous horns, one cackling and not-peering from behind her red glasses, one smiling impossibly wide from under her curled horns and red hood, one with two-tone glasses and four horns, one with tiny stub-horns and a scowl, one in a fashionable blouse and a red spiraling skirt, and one in an orange hood, her many-pupiled eye strangely alluring.

Before John could even ask for introductions, the scowling one stepped up.
"Great to see the Stupid Let's Ruin Gogdamn Everything committee showed up."
"Hi Karkat!"
And so they met for the first time, again.

-----

The other kids stepped off of the disc, having taken in the same interesting first view of their compatriots, creators, and... Well, friends, for the most part. Rose and Jade, each smiling broadly-- Rose slightly less so, being a bit out of practice-- stood slightly ahead of Dave, who was utterly unreadable behind his shades, as always.

John, however, had just run forward and hugged Karkat, laughing, and the sputtering complaints of the short-horned troll led all of his companions into gales of laughter-- Some of it quite derisive. But they were all here, together, because it was time to meet their creations face-to-face.

Karkat started probing John for answers with one quick question after another, and eventually John calmed him down and stood up. Realizing he had an audience of, honestly, more people then he had ever spoken before at once, ever, he started to blush and stammer a bit.

"Uh, hmm. So, yeah! We're here! And we brought a few things with us that will, um, hopefully make things a bit more comfortable up here?"
"Yeah, think again fuckass-- Adding you four blobs of pink dead weight to this place is just going to eat up more resources and make shit more ridiculous. So unless you somehow brought a fucking alchemiter connected to your Grist caches up here, I think you've just made everything worse."
"Oh..." John looked crestfallen at that, but then smiled
"Good thing that we did, then!"

Privately, John rejoiced at the confusion on their faces-- It wasn't a real prank, but a sudden reveal like that was nearly as cool-- And then he pulled out his Dad's stupidly-high-capacity Wallet modus, and retrieved the first card, gently Windy'ing the contents to the empty side of the cross-shaped chamber.

A massive pad, consoles and lasers and platforms, all in the form the entire group found staggeringly familiar-- An Alchemiter, fully functioning and completely upgraded, and most importantly, drawing resources from the grist gathered by the human kids-- Stupidly large amounts, as opposed to the Trolls caches, which were running on fumes.

The face-painted troll spoke up then "...I told you all, motherfucking miracles. Goddamn beautiful."

------

"You're going to be here for how long?"
The hot-blooded shout from Karkat brought the entire group back around again, suddenly interested in what John had just casually said to him.
"Uh, haha, a couple of months. Why?"

If everyone in the laboratory hadn't already known about Karkat's place on-- or more accurately off-- the hemospectrum from the fight with the Black King, they would have known now: A furious red flush was rolling under his skin, his limbs literally shaking with unbridled rage.
"You...Gog-damned...ARGH!"
He stormed off then, neither finishing his sentence nor paying much attention to where he walked. He stepped onto the nearest pad, warping away, and a far distant sound, another warp, meant he had probably just went into his private chambers.

John seemed totally beaten down by that: He had hoped Karkat had been a little happier to see them, to know they were safe, and maybe that he had gotten over his whole hate issue. Apparently not.

Rose moved forward and squeezed his shoulder, comforting him for a moment, and then the Juggalo spoke up again.

"Hey little dude, no worries- Kar's just like that. Always angry and shit. Anyway, I'm Gamzee-- Totally awesome to finally meet you kids. HONK!" The end of his sentence was punctuated with a weird honk-- Almost exactly like a rubber-bulbed metal horn, but spoken.

The first introduction broke what little ice remained after Karkat's fiery explosion, and everyone began a quick spree of short-hand greetings: More formality could come later. Well, not for one of them. Specifically, the ultra-muscular troll with the cracked glasses stepped forward and nodded his head very faintly before speaking.
"You are begrudgingly welcome here in the laboratory, humans. You may call me Equius, despite my station being innately-"
"Aww come nyon Equius, don't be such a silly! Of course they're purrfectly welcome!"
The interruption of his stilted speech came from the girl in the blue cat-hat, whom John had spoken to very little, if he guessed right. She steps forward, shifting one gloved hand out of her over-long green coat and putting it forward to shake.
"I'm Nepeta! Don't mind my moirail, he just gets like that, you nyo?"

Jade gave a little squee of joy and stepped forward to accept the offered hand, having been the only kid to talk much to Nepeta before now (barring Jaspersprite, who doesn’t count, of course)
"I am so glad you are nice in person! I was worried after how awkward things were at first, and then..." She bites her lower lip a little with her overbearing teeth, her nerves showing more then John's. The two of them quickly begin conversing separately, pulling in the finned girl as well.

Without any more introductions actually getting made, the kids and trolls spiraled off, almost by instinct, into the groups they had already formed-- Terezi bouncing between Dave and John, Kanaya speaking in hushed and slightly awed tones with Rose, Vriska bearing down on John with a predatory gaze, and so forth. Aradia and Sollux, however, leave after sharing very brief words with Dave, apparently heading off to talk with Karkat. And, proving that paradox space was, as always, a cruel mistress, this left Eridan in his traditional position-- Forever alone. He sulked off to the wand pile through the well-known "secret" entrance, not realizing he was followed.

-----

Tavros poked his head into the secret chamber and looks at the despondant totally-not-a-wizard. He steps forward, barely, reaching out his hand... And then he stops and turns away, shoulders slumped. It was no use-- Even Rufio couldn't give him the motivation to do that.

And, in a tradition in casts this large, our secretive watcher does not realize he was also watched. The large-horned troll walks back to his own room slowly, brushing a hand across the bull-head sign on his chest as he moves, thinking about the past. He enters the door and plops down on the bed, still so strange to actually walk and sit and move freely, but so nice. Barely a few seconds later there was a knock at the door.
"Uh, who is it?"
"It's meow, silly!"
"oh, Uh, come on in."
Nepeta-- Always really nice, super kind. A bit obsessed with romance, and her whole roleplaying thing, Tavros wasn't so good at. But she was cool.
"And I brought a furiend!"
"wait, hu, what?"
And impulsive. Cool and impulsive.

To Tavros' shock and worry, Nepeta bounced in through the door, smiling, and trailed by the human girl called Jade. Oh no, anyone but her right now. He killed her lusus-equivelant and then tried to hit on her, bragging about it... She forgave him but he was still so paranoid, especially after Vriska... He was thankful for his legs right now so that he could backpedal up his bed like a freaked-out little wriggler.

Nepeta, unaware of why he was flipping his lid, pounced up onto the weird flat beds in this place and curled up. Jade, meanwhile, stepped forward, hands held up in a sign of surrender.
"So, all things considered, we're OK now, right? Just wanna clear that up before we talk."
She seems oddly serious-- Straight faced, speaking with a plain tone.
"uh, Yeah, sure, if that's... If that's OK with you then yes. Please."
At this she broke into a smile and switched back to acting normal-- All of the strict behavior dropped in favor of giggling and walking over to sit right next to him. If he were in a better state of mind, he would realize that, legs or no, he couldn't leave now-- He was surrounded.

"So, me and Nepeta saw you checking up on the mopey guy... Eridian, I think?"
"It's, um, Eridan, actually... Wait you what?"
"Yeah, we saw him stalk off and then you followed him! It was just impawsibly adorable."
Tavros sighs
"I mean, I, uhmm... Well, yeah, I did. That was a thing. But... Nothing happened."
Jade looks a little sad "Shot down?"
Tavros blushes then, a rather murky shade of brown beneath his grey skin "...No."
She cocks her head at this, a bit confused "So you..."
Nepeta sighs "He couldn't do it. Pawsitively terrible at the whole self-esteem thing, our Tavros." She rubs the back of his head at this, earning a bit of a smile.
At this, the human girl stands and smiles at him-- A warm smile "I think we can fix that..."

-----

A bit later that day and everyone had regrouped, more or less, Karkat still steaming, so that they could set up some kind of organized schedule for using the Alchemiter. Tavros looked even more nervous then usual. John clapped his hands to get attention, and then made a chipper little announcement:
“OK, so, we set up a schedule for using the Alchemiter!”
“Why would we fucking need that?”
Dave sighed and put his arms into a pose Terezi smelled as... vaguely familiar. Arms out, palms up... Like she did when she was explaining stuff! Another point to the coolkid, then.
“Because you guys are out of grist, so one of -us- has to be here to do the button-pushing, so it uses our shit instead. And we don’t wanna be here all damn day, so organization is king.”
“I am glad to see you have chosen to bring light onto the natural order of bl00d... Wait.”
Equius looked closer at the list
“What is this ridiculousness? The order seems to start with Sollux of all people!”
“We, uh, found this chart showing how you guys connected in your game, so we used that...”
Eridan took this chance to interrupt before Equius could build up steam
“Wwait, so you aren’t usin blood order?”
“Nope!”
“...Wwell, it could be wworse. OK, so I’m paired with... Tavv? Fuckin really?”

Eventually all of the arguments and discussions were quelled, and the kids took turns running the Alchemiter for pairs of trolls at a time, while everyone else milled about nervously outside: The rooms here in the Veil almost seemed furnished to human tastes, not those of the trolls-- No recuperacoons, but beds, furnishings much more consistent with the world they made then the one they lived in. The time flew quickly for Dave, and his shift was over-- Jade’s turn. This left her alone in the room with Tavros and Eridan as they started flipping through their Sylladices, looking over the successful codes those before them had left. Tavros kept nervously looking to Jade, who nodded at him fiercely-- This was his big chance.

“Um, uh, Eridan...”
“Wwhat is it guttershit?”
“...” he sighed, defeated, stepping back, but then Jade was there, staring daggers at him-- They had coached him, he could do this! He slowly calmed himself and spoke again, this time with an unfamiliar strength to his voice, slow and measured, like he had practiced this line.
“Eridan. I need to say something.”
“Wwait, did you lose that vvoice-pausin thing you do, Tavv?”
“Eridan, I don’t... like when you call me bad things. But I do like when you call me Tavv. And... If you do the first one less, and the second one more, maybe you wouldn’t... have to be alone?”
He slumped, that one little speech taking every ounce of his will.

Eridan was shocked-- At the forthright gutterblood, at the sudden loss of stutter, at the fact that somebody liked one of his nicknames, and... to be frank, at how nice that solution sounded. How reasonable. So much better then another night in the wand pile. Just let up on this one landdweller-- But they were all landdwwellers now, Fef was right, and she was probably right about him the whole time-- and he could stop being alone. But... Addiction is a powerful thing. Which is why the words that stumbled out of his damn fool mouth next were the biggest shock.
“That wwould be nice... Tavv.”

Jade’s smile was nearly as broad as the one on Tavros as she watched the display, eventually jumping into the conversation herself, all congratulations and cheerful smiles, quickly ushering the two of them out, together, before the next group came in to make the comforts of home.

-----

They fell backwards onto Tavros’ bed, the shockingly hot fingers of the aquatic troll twining in his hair, the heat of the kiss equally strong. They had started in the hall, headless of being seen-- Tavros had no dignity to lose, and Eridan no friends to do the same with-- and this alone made Tavros so happy he could have died then and been content. But instead, the rising heat in his crotch, and the sinking pressure in his stomach, told him he was gloriously alive. They separated for a moment, Tavros gulping in air deeply.
“Is, uh, this OK?”
“I don’t see wwhy not. Evverybody else does wweird things, it’s my turn.”
“uhm, Our turn. I think. If that...is OK with you.”
“...Wwhatevver. Wwe can discuss that later.”
He ended any argument- Not that the bull-horned troll would have made one- with another kiss, this one more passionate, but inexperienced, his tongue probing a bit, his teeth drawing chocolate-brown blood. Tavros would have complained, but frankly, even with that in mind this was the best he had been treated in such a long time. This was topped seconds later by the amazingly warm hand rubbing up and down against his bulge through his slacks, quickly making things both very comfortable and very uncomfortable at the same time. He gasped through gritted teeth, eyes flaring wide to see the look of almost adorably fierce concentration on Eridan’s face, and stammered out a warning
“Eridan, I, um, gonna...”
“Come on, do it then!”
Tavros, however, had a little more presence of mind, and shoved Eridan away with a gasp and a few pants, already missing the close contact.
“Ca... Can’t. No pail. Don’t, um, want a mess. Dinner soon.”
“...Wwoww, I hadn’t thought about that. Good savve... Tavvros.”
Hearing is full name in that thick dark accent was almost enough to finish him off right there, but he had more self control than that-- He had to, dealing with Vriska throughout the whole session.
Eridan suddenly looked so out of place, however, that Tavros leaned up to kiss him, very briefly, before standing.
“Uhm, later, then?”
“Yeah.”

-----

For the first time since the new arrivals that morning, the trolls sat down to eat. And for the first time ever, the four kids sat down together to eat as well. A bunch of the tables had been taken from the computer lab to make a large dining table and a short buffet-style bench: It was cheaper to Alchemize food in bulk, it seemed. The seating order was a messy array of madness, people strewn all over, but it worked out. However, Eridan and Tavros walked in late, to the surprise of several. Terezi sniffed the air a few times, and then began to laugh and cackle, bending over the table to catch her breath. Tavros suddenly looked terribly afraid, and Eridan leaned down next to the blind girl and whispered something. She straightened, wiping a tear of laughter from her face.
“Hehehe. No worries, fishface. Secret’s safe with me. For now.”
Apparently that was good enough for him, because he sat down at one of the two remaining empty seats-- Immediately next to his former moirail, Feferi, and with an empty chair to one side. He pulled it out for Tavros to sit down, and a fork clattered to a plate: Vriska, shocked.
“W8. Did you just...”
“Can it, Serket.”
“Glub! Are you... Fish punning again?”
“Yeah, I guess so. Bewware my pun-nishing wit again!”
“...Might want to get back into practice.”

And so the first day ends the way it started: Every person present laughing at one troll. But this time it was not to his embarrassment. In fact, he honestly seemed happy. Maybe for the first time since this game started, in fact.
And, unseen by the others, his free hand grasps that of the boy beside him, who smiles as well.
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Three Short of 19