Constants & Variables - Act 3.5

[nobrandhero]

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Karkat's footsteps were heavy as he studied their surroundings with his usual scowl. "Why the hell do you let Rose make all these decisions?"

"Why the hell wouldn't I?" John floated a couple of inches off the floor. He periodically shot ahead to peek into the doors ahead of them before Jade or Karkat could reach them, always turning away with a disappointed frown. "She's really smart and can sense good decisions, so obviously she should call the shots."

"But you're the leader!"

"I'm the friendleader, Karkat." John shook his head with a sigh. "There's a difference."

"Yeah!" Jade said. "We voted on it and everything!" She smiled at Karkat, receiving only an eyeroll in return.

"That is fucking stupid." Karkat let out a huff. "You're all morons. Not that that was ever in question. You just reminded me right now is all."

John snickered. "Okay, man. And you're toootally not a moron, even though you're following us."

"I never left myself out of the moron category!" Karkat shouted.

Jade shushed him. The area was too unfamiliar to get a strong sense of their surroundings, but she was fairly certain they were safe. All the same, she didn't like to risk catching a wandering drone's attention with loud voices.

Karkat pulled a face, but his voice dropped in volume all the same. "The fuck are you doing anyway, Egbert?"

"Checking all the blocks for Daveglitch." John opened a door, glancing around inside before turning away. "Duh."

Karkat rubbed his temple. "And what happens when you inevitably stumble on a drone dressing room or something?"

"I'll teleport us to safety!" Jade said. She'd been ready to nab John and teleport him away whenever he opened a door the whole time; she just figured it wouldn't do to worry anyone by stating such.

"Yeah, or we can beat them up." John shrugged. "Whatever. We can't find Daveglitch if we're being too cautious to look for him properly."

"We can't find Daveglitch if we're dead either," Karkat muttered.

"We won't die, Karkat!" Jade teleported to the next door, beating John to checking behind it. It just led to an empty room full of wires. "John's right. We didn't come here to snoop around the obvious areas." She backed away, examining the path ahead of them. It looked no different than the last five corridors and she doubted that would change anytime soon. "Where would you hide if you were a killer glitch?"

"I don't fucking know. Inside a computer?" Karkat threw up an arm. "Where else would a glitch call home?"

Jade held her chin in her hand and stared at the ceiling in thought. She'd studied the ship schematics that were sketched out in her ancestor's journal at least a dozen times on her own, not to mention the times she'd gone over them with Rose. If she had their location correct, then...

"There's a server block not far from here." She darted forward, beckoning for the other two to follow her. "C'mon, we can backtrack if we need to!"

"Wait, what the hell are we gonna do in a server bloc- uh, room?" Karkat said, keeping pace with her all the same.

"It's the closest to living inside a computer we've got around here!" Jade said, slowing only to peek around a corner and make sure the coast was clear before speeding up again. "The glitch would probably feel the most at home with a bunch of other important electronics. Or it might be with the empress, but I'd rather not meet her if we can help it, so we check everywhere else first!"

"What if the empress is like Rose though?" John said, still keeping to the air instead of running. "She might be pretty cool."

Karkat groaned and Jade didn't have to even glance his direction to know that he was rolling his gander bulbs. "John, she's probably fucking possessed like the Strider clone. She could be the nicest goddamn alien in either of our universes and we still wouldn't want to meet her in a dark alley. Hell, not even a well-lit alley."

"Shit, really?" John frowned. "Maybe we should help her, then."

"Maybe we should focus on helping ourselves first, dumpass."

"Shh!" Jade said as they neared the door that she was pretty sure led to the server block, provided she remembered the schematics correctly. She slowed her pace so they could approach more quietly, holding a finger to her mouth for silence. Once they were all huddled by the door, she cautiously pushed it open and was relieved that it didn't make a sound. She still prepared to teleport at a second's notice.

John ducked under her arms to peek in first. She knew they'd hit the mark when he tensed and equipped a hammer, but he didn't back away or attack. She pushed the door open the rest of the way to see the scene for herself.

The block was lit up with tall computer servers resting against every wall. Some lights flashed, others held a steady glare. (On a better night, Jade would have liked to have taken the servers apart and seen for herself the technology readily available to the empress.) Daveglitch sat at the base of one of the servers, unmoving as he stared into space.

"Holy shit, what do we do now?" Karkat said at the lowest volume Jade had ever heard from him.

She frowned. "Be really, really careful and, um... I'm not sure." She exchanged glances with John. "Do you think he'll attack? Can we try to reason with him?"

He shrank back and shook his head. "Ohhh man, that goes badly, Jade," he whispered. "He does not stop trying to kill you even if you're his best bro. I do not think being his moirail will help either."

Before Jade could point out that she wasn't technically this Dave's moirail, Karkat shoved past them. "Fuck it," he said. "Let's see how the fucker does with a stranger who's got Blood powers then."

John's eyes went wide. "Karkat, be careful!" He made to dart after Karkat, but Jade caught his arm and held him in place, just in case he might do something stupid and forget that only Blood players were (relatively) safe touching the glitch.

Karkat stomped right up to Daveglitch, much to Jade's horror, but Daveglitch didn't respond yet. "Hey, fuckface!" Karkat said at full volume. "This is for Gamzee!" He swerved his arm downwards and smacked Daveglitch across the face.

John gasped audibly while Jade held her breath. She was sure her blood pusher must have stopped for that split second between Karkat making contact and Daveglitch reacting to it.

Daveglitch slumped sideways from the force of Karkat's strike, then crumpled to the floor and otherwise didn't move.

Karkat froze, still holding his hand out as if for a second try. "Oh my god. What?" He nudged Daveglitch with his foot, flinching back to wait for a reaction, then nudging him harder when Daveglitch remained still. "What the fuck? What the hell's wrong with him?"

"Check for a pulse!" Jade darted over, getting as close to Daveglitch as she dared. She thought she saw him breathing, but it was hard to tell. "Is he still alive?"

Karkat knelt and rested a hand on Daveglitch's neck. After a moment's hesitation, he caught Daveglitch by the shoulders and hauled him back into a sitting position. From how Daveglitch slumped, it seemed likely he would have collapsed again without Karkat holding him up. "H-he's breathing, he's just..." Karkat waved a hand over Daveglitch's eyes. "It's like he's catatonic."

Jade's Trollian beeped. It was hardly a good time for a chat, but she couldn't afford to miss a message when anything could be happening to the others. "Hang on!" She fished out a laptop from her sylladex and tried not to tense when she saw Dave's username. She let out a sigh of relief when she read that Dave was only captured and not harmed. "Dave got himself in a bind, so we need to try to hold still for Terezi to catch up to us," she said, bidding Dave farewell.

"Terezi's by herself?" Karkat straightened, almost letting Daveglitch fall before remembering to pin his shoulders up. "Fuck, we weren't supposed to split up!"

"Well that is why she's coming to us!" Jade said and threw her computer back into her inventory.

John glanced at the door. "Can we hold position that long? I mean, he's..." He nodded at Daveglitch. "Yeah..."

Karkat jabbed a finger at Daveglitch's chest. "If this asshole starts acting up, I will strangle the glitch out of him myself! We aren't abandoning Terezi!"

"Shoooosh!" Jade said on automatic. She knelt next to him. "Of course we're not abandoning one of your friends! We're safe for now and we'll figure something out if anything goes wrong later."

Karkat still frowned deeply but he nodded. He poked at Daveglitch's forehead and tried grasping some of the static between his fingers. "Fuck, why isn't the glitch coming off him?" He pressed a hand to Daveglitch's shoulder and gave him a good shove. Neither Dave nor the glitch reacted. "I thought it'd at least recoil if I hit him, if not maybe let go of him. That's what it always did with Gamzee."

"Something's clearly different right now," Jade said. She'd seen how the glitch reacted to Karkat's touch on the viewport; it didn't bode well that its behavior was so completely different now that it was in front of her. "We'll figure it out. Just nobody but Karkat touch him for now, okay?"

"Man... He barely looks like Dave without his shades," John said.

Jade furrowed her brow. She'd seen Dave shadeless more than a few times in the last perigee and even then he looked nothing like Daveglitch. Their demeanors were too different: Dave was overconfident and tried to put on an air of indifference, whereas Daveglitch wouldn't even raise his eyes and truly was indifferent to his surroundings. "I don't think that's the main reason why he looks different," she said.

Karkat snorted. "Yeah, he's not exuding an air of pompous jackassery. That helps."

John tilted his head, peering closer at Daveglitch. "What the hell happened to his horn?"

"His horn?" Jade followed John's gaze until she spotted a jagged hole on the outside edge of Daveglitch's horn. There were small cracks trailing from the hole, but the worst of the damage was about the size of a bullet wound. "Ohhhh, I think that's where I shot him!"

The other two stared at her. "Holy shit, you what?"

"Not on purpose!" She waved her hands in front of her. "I mean, I shot him on purpose, but I didn't know it was him. He was at my hive just before I entered the game. He killed Bec, so I shot him. I thought it looked like I'd hit a troll's horn, but he moved too fast to see." She inched closer to Dave, examining the wound. It must have hurt, but at least he'd gotten the bullet out. She wondered if the glitch at least toned down his physical pain. "Sorry, Dave."

"Don't touch him!" Karkat yanked Daveglitch closer to him and away from Jade. "Only Blood players get to toy with something this static-y, remember?"

"I know, I know." Jade sighed and settled as close to Daveglitch as Karkat would allow without glaring. "Dave? Dave, can you hear us?" she said softly. "It's your friends. I'm sorry it took us so long, but we're gonna help you, I promise."

John sat on his haunches, ducking his head down further to try meeting Daveglitch's blank gaze. "I wasn't really expecting him to start rambling stupid metaphors at us or anything, but it's kinda weird that he's not being a glitchy creep either."

"You don't think it's grown immune to Blood powers?" Karkat picked at Daveglitch's sleeve, scowling when the static didn't react to his touch. "Because that would just fucking figure, if the only thing I can contribute to this bullshit doesn't work anymore."

"Well, you haven't been possessed yet, so that's hopefully a good sign," Jade said. She'd been trying to ignore the beeping of her Trollian -- she was fairly certain Dave was just bored -- but after what may have been the dozenth beep, she pulled out her laptop again. "Hang on, Dave needs something else."

TG: jade
TG: jade
TG: hey jade
TG: jade unless a glitchy asshole is chasing you with a sword you get your ass back on trollian
TG: jade
TG: ok fine just listen
TG: the corpse wasnt a corpse there is a live adult in here
TG: and turns out hes a freak like me
TG: also his name is strider so i think he may be my ancestor
TG: thats
TG:
TG: a thing
GG: !!!!!!!!!!!!
GG: i thought you didnt believe in ancestors!
TG: yeah i dont but theres a difference between an ancestor and a dude you share ectoslime with who basically acts as your ancestor
TG: also
TG: "i told you so dave!!!"
TG: there now you dont gotta say it after i drop the next part on you
TG: this asshole is that rebellion leader you and rose couldnt stop gossiping about
GG: 8O
TG: yeah pretty much
GG: the signless is still alive???
TG: sorta but he goes by dirk and also hes not in great shape
TG: hes been stuck in this cell for an assfuck long time and hes chained in these molten shackles that suck like a dozen hoofbeast bulges
GG: oh no!!!! is he trapped in the torture devices shaped like your sign?
TG: yeah they are kinda the same shape if you tilt your head just right
GG: ohhh noooooo
GG: i guess that part of the myth was true :(
TG: wait this is literally what my anon symbol is supposed to represent isnt it
TG: holy fuck my shirt just took a turn for stone cold fucking morbid
GG: sorry :( :( :(
GG: is umm
GG: is his matesprit there too???
TG: i dunno ill ask
TG: ok he just gave me the fucking stink eye
TG: thanks a lot jade i think you put me on his shitlist
GG: :(
GG: sorry!!
GG: i wonder what that means though....
TG: the guys probably dead or something and we just trampled over this dudes lovesick blood pusher idk

John and Karkat had been talking to each other the entire time Jade was on Trollian, but it was only when a third voice mixed in that she froze and paid attention to the words. The other two also went still and silent, their heads snapping up as they heard, "Hello? Is someone there?" from the hallway.

Karkat edged closer to John. "Who the hell was that?" he whispered. "I thought Rose said there weren't any other people on this ship."

"There shouldn't be." Jade set her computer aside so she could go for a rifle if need be.

John stood. "Are you friendly or a bad guy?" he called.

Karkat facepalmed so hard that Jade winced at the sound.

"Not the latter, I should hope," the unknown voice said before an adult troll stepped through the door. Jade was two seconds from whipping out a weapon, but she froze as she got a look at the young man. His irises were the same shade as Jade's blood, his horns likewise sharing an appearance with hers, and his jacket had the familiar scrawl that she wore on her shirt. "Gadzooks," the other Harley said, his gander bulbs widening behind his glasses as he studied the block, "what are a bunch of kids doing on board?"

"Um, well, sir, that's a good question, and the answer is definitely not anything suspicious!" John said with a straight face.

"Yeah, John, he'll really buy that one." Karkat grimaced. "Better roll for bluff. Maybe you'll miraculously hit a critical and the ceiling will cave in before he calls you on bullshit."

The adult limeblood crossed his arms. "And might I ask what exactly is 'not suspicious' about two young trolls and an alien infiltrating the empress's unmanned battleship, in the server block no less?"

"Well," John puffed up his chest, "if you're not a bad guy like you say you are, then you probably won't mind that we're trying to get rid of the glitchy asshole who's been pulling the strings around here."

"How do you know about that?" The adult narrowed his eyes. "Not even Dirk realized- No one's ever found out about that thing without falling into one of its booby traps first."

"The explanation for that is a bit complicated. Um, if it's all right to ask you something though..." Jade stared straight at him, studying his face. His features were more masculine and had a few more sweeps of age to them, plus his hair was cut short, but otherwise it wasn't that different from staring into the mirror. "By any chance, sir, are you Gadabout?"

"I... Where did you hear that title? No one's used it in..." Gadabout trailed off as he looked her over. "I'll say, lass, are you a limeblood or is your sign just a queer color for olive?"

"Yes, I am a limeblood!" She couldn't hold back a smile as she said, "I'm, um. I'm your descendant, you see!"

John and Karkat both gawked at her, but their expressions of shock were nothing compared to Gadabout's confused stare.

"My des..." Gadabout looked between the three of them, mouth agape, but John only shrugged at him. "You can't be serious, surely?"

"I am!" She nodded five times in a row. "My name is Jade Harley, I share your sign, and I am absolutely positive that Gadabout is my ancestor, so if you're really him..."

"My word." He studied her face. "I... I ought to pettifog with you about this, but I can't imagine how you found yourself with my name and blood if you aren't my surprise descendant!"

"So you believe me?"

"Yes, I think I must. Jade, was it? Even our dang-fucking-fangled first names are similar." He shook his head. "I'm Jake. That sounds a bit friendlier than Gadabout, yes?" He smiled a touch.

Jade beamed back at him. "Nice to actually meet you, Jake!" She would have liked nothing more than to sit him down and ask about everything she'd read in his journal, but it wasn't the right time for it. There was only one thing she needed to ask. "Why are you here though? I thought you'd died when you and your matesprit went to face the empress!"

Jake hesitated. "That's... a bit complicated," he said with a wince. "Needless to say, we were only taken captive, and word of our deaths was a bit... exaggerated, for the sake of... Oh, fuck, some balderdash about unstable timezones."

"Timezones? Oh!" Jade gasped and turned to the other two. "They probably meant Dave's time loops! I told Dave about the Signless before he split off into Daveglitch, so Daveglitch knew Signless was supposed to die. If news broke that he was alive, it would send the timeline spinning into doomed territory!"

Looks of understanding dawned on John and Karkat's faces (while Daveglitch still was unresponsive), but Jake just scratched his head and said, "Err, I beg your pardon?"

"Oh, sorry, it's a long story that involves my friend here!" she said, gesturing to Daveglitch.

"Wait, you know him?" Jake said, somehow managing to look the most startled that Jade had seen thus far.

"Yes! He's our friend Dave and we're trying to get the glitch off of him. It's attacked us in the past, but right now he's not even responding to us!"

Jake nodded with a frown. "I'm sorry you weren't aware, but he's like this most of the time, when that... thing isn't controlling him."

"Wait, he's not possessed right now?" Karkat said, curling a lip.

"No, he's never this docile when he's possessed." Jake strode over to Daveglitch and knelt next to him. He held a hand out, but Daveglitch was as responsive to him as he was to anyone else. "Whatever has him in its grip seems to have limited energy, so the lad's often left like an abandoned puppet when he's not needed."

John furrowed his brow. "So the glitch can't keep that many irons in the fire without losing track of a few?" He snapped his fingers. "If it's been infecting entire galaxies lately, I bet it's stretched itself thin!"

"Then why is he still glitching up?" Karkat asked.

"Shit, uh..." John rubbed the back of his neck, glancing to Jade. "Maybe it's still connected to him a little? Or... Do you know how long he's been like this, Mr. Harley's Ancestor?"

Jake hummed as he thought. "At least five hundred sweeps. Beyond that, I really can't say." He reached for Daveglitch. "I can try asking him though."

"Wait, don't touch-" Karkat yanked at Daveglitch's arm to try to pull him away from Jake's reach, but Jake's fingers had already made contact with Daveglitch's shoulder.

Jake glanced up. "What?" he said, completely unharmed and unpossessed by the static despite touching it directly.

Karkat still waited a few more seconds before loosening his grip on Daveglitch and muttering, "Nothing. Guess he's not contagious right now."

Jake lightly shook Daveglitch's shoulder. "C'mon, lad. Up and at 'em. I know you can do it." He caught Daveglitch's chin and lifted his face. "Look at me." He started to take his hand away but stopped when Daveglitch only went limp without the support. Jake sighed. "No, here, at me. See?" He held Daveglitch in place a few seconds longer before releasing him. This time Daveglitch kept his chin raised. "Do you hear me, old chum?" Jake smiled. "I've finally learned that your name is Dave! Does that ring true?"

"N0." Daveglitch's voice sounded as if it was generated by a machine, with only the slightest echo that sounded like Dave's natural tone.

"Oh? Then what is it?"

"[Returned: NULL]." What little organic voice Daveglitch had left was completely absent in those two words. It made Jade's chest twist.

Jake's smile faltered. "Of... course that hasn't changed. Look, I've something important to ask. Do you think you can tell me how many sweeps you've been alive now?"

Daveglitch bowed his head and was silent for a long moment. Jade wasn't sure he hadn't gone back to his catatonic-like state, but Jake waited patiently all the same until Daveglitch slowly said, "0ne m1ll10n, twenty-f1ve th0usand, f0ur hundred, and th1rteen sweeps."

Jade's mouth went dry. She'd known he couldn't have controlled the flow of history with only a week's worth of time loops, but she wasn't prepared to hear numbers that high either. Daveglitch hadn't even aged since they'd last seen him.

They'd done it all wrong and failed. They were supposed to help Daveglitch, not let him suffer for countless sweeps all alone. She should done something, anything, differently to cut the glitch off before it could force him to time travel to that extent.

"W-wait, how long is a sweep?" Karkat said. "Please fucking tell me it's shorter than a year."

Jade swallowed, forcing her voice to stay even. "It's almost eight hundred nights."

Karkat's face fell. "He's been stuck like this over two million years?"

Jake shook his head and shuddered. "Golly, I'd never been brave enough to ask before. I'm sorry that I couldn't warn you. Poor thing."

"This is probably why he's static-y even when the glitch is giving him a break," John said. He frowned but otherwise he looked by far the least distressed among them. "After a million sweeps, the digital shit seeped in permanently." He shrugged. "And s'why he's not reacting to us."

"He has to still know us, though, right?" Jade said.

Jake frowned. "Well... do you know these young trolls?" he asked Daveglitch, receiving no response. He caught Daveglitch's chin again to point his gaze towards Jade. "Them, lad. Do you recognize them?"

Daveglitch stared blankly for a long moment. "N0."

Jade stepped closer and slid to her knees to be at eye-level with him. "Dave, c'mon... We fought side-by-side, remember? You were always sending me your cool raps and asking me to record my bass for you. We used to quote your comic at each other. Remember stairs?" She grinned. "We told you about stairs, bro!"

The lack of acknowledgement, let alone the lack of customary "I warned you, dog!" echo, was... not the most disheartening thing Jade had felt in the last perigee or so, considering how many deaths she'd witnessed lately, but it certainly secured a place in the top five.

"Jade..." Karkat said, setting a hand on her shoulder. "I don't think this guy is Strider anymore."

"We still can't just give up on him." She touched Daveglitch's cheek and was glad that Jake took the hint to step away. She wanted to pap and shoosh Daveglitch and drag him to a nice pile, but that wouldn't be very appropriate considering he wasn't actually the Dave in her pale quadrant. "We were gonna be moirails, Dave," she said quietly. She dug into her sylladex with her free hand, pulling out one of the phones that Dave had sent her the captcha code for. She quickly scrolled through Trollian before turning the screen towards Daveglitch. "Look, this was a conversation we had before you split off into your doomed timeline."

His eyes flickered and she hoped that meant he was reading the text. "Garden... Gn0st1c?" he said.

Her blood pusher jumped and she nodded. "Yeah. Hey, turntechGodhead. Do you remember me?" she said, but he was silent again. "I'm so sorry, TG. I should have come for you sooner."

"I don't think you could have done that, Jade," John said. "I think the only person who could have nabbed him was Dave and now he can't do that without dooming this timeline."

Jade shook her head. Maybe if she'd leveled up more, she could have found a way to seal him from time travel, or if she'd been more careful about breeding the frog in the first place (may he rest in peace), or if she hadn't agreed to break them out of Sgrub... There was some way that she could have helped Daveglitch earlier.

The overhead lights flashed, changing from the bright white glow to a deep red, and an alarm blared loud enough to make Jade wince.

"What the hell is that?" Karkat said, quick to nab Daveglitch's shoulder in case he was about to go full-on glitch mode.

"That's..." Jake frowned deeply. "That's only supposed to signal when an heiress has challenged the Luminary so that the Shepherd knows about it, but..."

John looked aghast. "Oh my god, Rose!" He sprinted out the door without another word, but before anyone could call after, he came running back. He dragged Terezi after him, holding her by the wrist. "Guys, I found Terezi!"

"The hell is with you, John?" Terezi said, her nose wrinkled.

"So much, Terezi!" John said, letting her go and giving her a light push towards Jade. "So fucking much, I cannot even go into it, because I need to rescue my moirail before she does something really dumb!" He ran off again.

"John, for fuck's sake-" Karkat shouted after him.

Once more, John was back within seconds, breathing a bit heavily. "Okay, so I don't actually know where the hell to find the empress!"

Karkat facepalmed. "Dumbass."

Jade bit her lip and turned to Jake. If Rose really had gone and run into the Luminary... or, worse, purposefully challenged her... "Jake, can you show him the way? You've got to know this ship pretty well if you live here, right?"

Jake started. "I, uh... I'm terribly sorry, but I really shouldn't get involved with that. I mean, you might run into..." He cringed. "Look, I'm just not authorized to meddle with something like that."

"But she could die if I don't get there in time!" John said.

"Hey, calm down, pap pap or whatever." Terezi swatted her hand at the air twice in his general direction. "I can figure out where Rose is the same way I got to you guys. Dave's not in immediate danger."

"Terezi, I take back everything bad I ever said about you." John smiled and let out a relieved sigh. "You're awesome and we will absolutely make up for the late rescue party to Dave later with shitty movie nights or something."

"Wait! Maybe we can split up and help both of them!" Jade tugged at Jake's sleeve. "If you can't go near the empress, you could lead me to Dave instead!"

Jake's gaze dropped to Daveglitch and Karkat. "I thought that was Dave?"

"No, no, this is a different Dave! He's my moirail and he was taken captive by drones!"

Jake's mouth twisted. "I wish I could help, but that's rather unusual behavior for the drones. They're supposed to cull intruders, not take them captive. I haven't the faintest where they'd even take him!"

"He said he's stuck in a cell with your matesprit, actually! You must know where he is, right? Oh, we can help you rescue him finally!"

Jake hesitated. "He's with Di... with Signless?"

"Yes! He's, um, he's your matesprit's descendant, actually!"

"You lot are just full of surprises, aren't you?" Jake ran a hand over his brow and shook his head. "That means your friend is a mutant, doesn't it?"

"That's kind of a secret normally, but yes!"

"Oh dear." Jake sighed. "That explains it. The drones are on strict orders for how to handle... well, trolls with red blood, and I'm afraid they may have mistaken your friend for Signless."

John was practically hopping on the balls of his feet. "Okay, so you'll rescue Dave, I'll rescue Rose, and can I go do that now?" he said too quickly.

Jade nodded. "Yes, it's a plan, don't worry about us!"

John took a step for the door before he paused. "Karkat, you're coming with me and Terezi, right?"

Karkat frowned, glancing at Daveglitch. "Sorry, John. You know that rescuing Strider's the last thing I'm interested in, but I need to keep an eye on this guy. I'll just slow you down if I drag him with or whatever." He got to his feet to give John a quick kiss. "Go make sure Lalonde doesn't get herself too hurt, you cocksucker."

"Thanks, Karkat." John bumped his forehead against Karkat's. "And don't let your guard down around Daveglitch. He stabbed me and I'm his best friend."

"Kind of idiot do you take me for? I'll be fine." Karkat lightly shoved John's shoulder. "Better see you soon."

"Yeah." John caught Terezi's wrist again to guide her toward the corridor. "Good luck, Jade! I'll contact you on Trollian when everything's okay!"

"Go save our boyfriend's useless but fabulous ass, Jade!" Terezi said, smirking as John yanked her out the door.

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