Chapter Text
The air popped and fizzled with energy and you were suddenly thrust through the air to God-knows-where. All you knew was that when the ground beneath your feet stopped moving, your cheeks were burning with that same sensation as when you step in from the cold. The only problem was that you were simply walking across your room when you seemed to be thrown across the universe and nowhere near the cold.
You opened your eyes, having squeezed them shut in your shock, and immediately froze.
You were in a large, grey room, ringed by a plain countertop topped with computers. The thing that really caught your attention were the room’s occupants, though. For the first few seconds, you didn’t recognize their features and were merely frozen with pure instinctual fear at being so suddenly uprooted. Then, you realized that only one race had these particular features, more specifically, one group of beings.
They were trolls. Karkat, Kanaya, Feferi, and Sollux, to be exact.
The shock on their own faces was proof enough that they weren’t expecting you, and everyone jumped after you squawked in surprise and grabbed at your head.
“Oh my god.” They stared. “Ohhh my god.” This was crazy. “Nooooo no no no this can’t be real.” They exchanged glances while your turned away from them, still clutching at your head. God, if they were real, and you were here, then that must mean that everything that happened in Homestuck, as much as you loathed to think, was true.
On the bright side, that included the multiverse theory, so that’s cool, but now isn’t the time to be nerding out. “Holy shit.”
You being here doesn’t coincide with any of the other sessions you saw in the comic, so you’re probably a glitch that surely makes this one a doomed session. Ok, you can live with that. Probably. Wait, no, you’re going to die with that. Because you’re now in a doomed session. Right? You squinted and groaned. Damn, you wish that you had paid more attention to all the fine details of the comic, but all those words . You couldn’t focus. Now look where that got you.
You turned back around when you heard someone clear their throat. Karkat looked incredibly bewildered and you tried to make yourself seem as small and unoffending as possible.
“EXCUSE ME BUT WHAT THE FUCK?”
You smiled awkwardly. You know the one, where your mouth is just a little too wide, like you know you messed up big time--even though you technically didn’t do anything yourself right now. That one.
“Uh, hi…?”
You were met with two blank stares, an excited wave, and a very confused glare.
You took a step back and stumbled, not realizing that you were standing on the transportalizer in the center of the room, leaving you sprawled out on the floor with your legs still on the pad.
“Ouch! Fuck,” You groaned, god, you should have remembered that was there. Oh, you’re an idiot.
Feferi jumped out of the horn pile next to Sollux and ran to your side, placing her hand on your shoulder. “Oh my cod, are you okay?!” You jumped at her touch, now keenly aware that they were, in fact, real and not just hallucinations.
“Uh, yeah, just kinda hurt.” Kanaya began to walk towards you and you just knew she would get all motherly. God, you shouldn’t be here, you needed to get back home! You were endangering their lives! Well, there were already in danger, but you were certainly dooming them just by changing the timeline by this much!
The symbol on the transportalizer started flashing and beeping and Sollux called out, “2omeone’2 comiing iin, you’d better move,” before turning back to Karkat with an irritated look on his face. You scrambled back from the transportalizer pad and as soon as you were clear, Eridan appeared in your place in a flash of white light. Karkat and Sollux began to argue over something as Eridan startled at your presence.
“wwhat the fuck is goin on in here?” He looked at you as if you were a bug as you scooched away from the attention of Feferi and Kanaya.
“Eheheheh, um, look guys, I need to go,” you got to your knees and wobbled over to Karkat and Sollux who were now fully shouting at each other, “Sollux, do you know how to--”
“WHAT?”
You realized your mistake and slapped a hand over your mouth.
“Oh shit.”
You aren’t supposed to know their names! How are you supposed to explain that not only are you from another universe but one where you just casually read their adventure from your computer screen?!
“I-I-I need to go…” You scrambled backward towards the transportalizer, mumbling “sorry”s along the way. “I’m sorry, oh fuck, fuck fuck fuck,” you shouldered Eridan out of the way and stepped onto the transportalizer with a distant “‘scuse me Eridan,” ignoring his indignant, “hey!”
The transportalizer didn’t feel the same as whatever it was that brought you here. It’s a good thing too because you hardly had time to register that the glow was gone before you took off running through the halls of the meteor, scanning the plain grey walls for a place to hide. Your footfalls were fast and loud, coming close to sounding like claps or a frantic heartbeat. Fitting.
Oh come on! You knew there had to be one around here somewhere… There, a vent! You remember the vents being big enough for Nepeta to crawl around in and have enough room to stand and paint comfortably, so you should be able to fit through most of them as long as Nepeta isn’t actually really small. The other trolls seemed pretty much human-sized if not just a little taller, so you think you’ll be fine.
You slid to a stop and dropped to your knees, immediately digging your fingers into the small space between the wall and the vent cover, resisting the urge to sneeze as a gentle, constant cool breeze blew over your face through the slats. It popped off and onto the floor with a loud clang and you clambered through the opening, not even bothering to put it back. You were sure there was some kind of surveillance system here, so they would be able to tell where you went anyway. Your best bet was to lose them in the vents.
You struggled to pull yourself up the vertical shafts. It really has been a while since your last gym class, and your arm strength was seriously lacking. It was a good thing that you had pretty strong legs or you definitely wouldn’t have made it two levels up. Feeling along the walls and judging from the sounds of your shuffling, you had made your way into a connecting vent that was more like a capsule than a vent. This one was completely dark though, so you figured you were safe. You reached into your back pocket, briefly wondering if you could now operate a sylladex since you were in the Homestuck universe, and pulled out your phone. You didn’t really know what it could offer you except light right now, and that’s all you really wanted at the moment after spending the last 10 to 15 minutes crawling through dark vents.
You pressed the home button on your phone and a painted face was illuminated a mere 7 inches from your own.
“hOnK”
You screamed, dropping your phone between your legs and reflexively punching Gamzee square in the nose.
“Oh my god I’m so sorr-” You reached your arms forward as if to help before you remembered that this guy was a crazy serial killer.
He was dangerous.
He was crazy.
He could easily kill you.
Granted, so could any troll, but he was just crazy enough to feel no remorse for it.
You shut your mouth tightly and drew your arms back, pressing yourself against the cold metal of the chamber.
He groaned and clutched his nose, “mOtHeR FuCk, LiL’ mAmA, tHaT hUrT.”
You stared at him with wide eyes, very concerned for both your own safety and the sudden, overwhelming urge to kill him first before he killed the others. But that wasn’t something you could do. He had a role to play, after all, however confusing it may be. Not that you could do that anyway, you didn’t think you had the stomach for that right now. Or ever.
He looked up into your eyes and you held your breath, seeing that his own were glowing just a twinge redder than the other trolls’ eyes had been. He smiled lazily at you despite having just been punched in the nose, his eyes half-lidded and his greasepaint already heavily smudged, though how much was from your punch you couldn’t tell. You hoped he hadn’t already made it to Equius and Nepeta, no matter how much that would upset the timeline.
“WeLl YoU’rE nEw, ArEn’T yOu?”
You continued to stare at him in the dim light coming from your phone which was now face down, afraid to talk. So you nodded.
He huffed out a low honk/laugh and picked up your phone, lighting up his face once more. “WhAt ThE fUcK iS ThIs?” he asked, flipping it around in his hands the way a monkey would a switchblade: clumsy and dangerous.
You figured by the way he looked back up at you in the flickering light that he wouldn’t accept your silence this time. “I-it’s uh, it’s my phone.” He raised an eyebrow at you and looked back at the bright screen, lifting it higher in the air to inspect it. “It’s like, a-uh, a little computer,” you offered with a nervous smile.
He glanced at you and then back at the screen, his lazy smile slowly falling and his eyebrows knitting together as he thought before they suddenly shot up in realization, his smile curling like the Grinch’s.
“YoU kNoW tOo MuCh, SiS, jUsT lIkE mE.” You grinned nervously, now clearly panicking. You were pretty sure you were sweating bullets right now from the way he leaned in just a little closer as he lowered your phone, but you still nodded stiffly at him. The light from your phone in his lap cast a weird under lighting on his face, making him that much scarier.
He honk/laughed at you again and leaned back all the way against the vent wall, holding out your phone for you to take back. “ThEn I gUeSs YoU kNoW wHaT i’M gOiNg To Do?” You cautiously reached forward to take your phone, nodding. You had just barely grazed its edge when his other hand shot out and clenched around your forearm, trapping you. You gasped at the sudden pain and froze, seeing his eyes flash at you in warning.
“AnD yOu KnOw To StAy OuT oF a MoThErFuCkEr’S wAy, DoN’t YoU?” He grinned, his sharp fangs glinting at you in the low light. You nodded at him and gulped, willing yourself to be brave enough to buy yourself and the others some time. You had a plan hatching in the back of your head, and should certain events begin to come together, you had a pretty good feeling it could work. This universe was fucked simply by you being here, one more doomed timeline wouldn’t make that much of a difference.
But Gamzee didn’t know that.
At least, you hoped he didn’t.
“D-don’t worry, Gamzee, I-uh, I know what you’re supposed to do.” He squinted at you as you tried to calm yourself down by forcing yourself to continue to talk, just like on a stage. “I don’t really know how you’re supposed to do it, but you do. I can’t mess with that or everything will be ruined. I won’t kill you, I can’t.”
He scrutinized you for a moment and you felt like a bug that was being judged for whether or not it should be squished. Your heart was racing and you were sure he could feel it by the way your arm throbbed under his hand. After a few more agonizingly long seconds, he opened his hand and moved away from you, letting you clutch your hand and your phone to your chest.
“I gUeSs I cAn’T aRgUe WiTh ThAt,” he said, shrugging as if he hadn’t just basically threatened you. He smiled innocently, but you knew the knowledge he held behind his eyes.
“Eheheh… yeah…” You rubbed where he had grabbed your arm, watching him warily. He started to move to get up, and once he was on his knees, he loomed over you, placing a calloused hand on your shoulder, barely grazing your neck.
“just make sure to keep your motherfucking word, lil’ sis,” he paused and You craned your neck up to see him and felt your mouth go dry as his glowing, orange eyes glared down at you, burning away any courage you had at the moment as if he’d held a cigarette to tissue paper, “Y’HEAR?!”
The echo of his voice shook the vent a little, making your ears ring.
“Yeah…” You squeaked, breathlessly.
Seemingly satisfied, he nodded and moved out the way you had come in, looking back over his shoulder at you one last time. “May the messiahs cross our paths again, mama.” With that, he slipped through the vent, leaving with a few trailing “HONK”s of varying volume along the way.
You stayed still as long as you could before you let out a breath you hadn’t even realized you were holding. God, if he was scary in the comic, he was 10 times that in person. You allowed yourself the freedom to get over your fear before wiping his smelly grease paint off your knuckles on your shorts. Who cared at this point? They were already covered in soot and dust from the vents by now.
You looked at your phone screen, taking note of the time despite it really not mattering right now, and sighed. What a mess you’d gotten yourself into, and you’d barely done anything!
You pulled yourself to your knees and continued on your way. You were so torn right now. With Gamzee acting the way he was, it was clear that you were sometime around when all that shit went down on the meteor. Now that you’re here, though, you have no idea what’s going to happen next. All your knowledge of connected future events must now be presumed worthless. You have no idea what you’ve already fucked up, but you have a feeling that you will very soon.