Constants & Variables - Act 3.11

[nobrandhero]

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Dave jerked awake to a sharp smack across his face.

"Ow," he said, cringing despite himself.

Terezi leaned over him and twisted her mouth. She wasn't wearing her glasses for once, so her unfocused teal and white human eyes stared down in his general direction. "You were yelling in your sleep again."

He groaned and flopped his head back against the couch. The dream had already faded from memory, but it had probably involved drones or purplebloods. That was the usual shit, anyway. "You mean you slapped me out of a sweetass dream where I was in some kind of awesome battle and practicing my war cry?"

"Nah, you sounded pretty scared to me, coolkid." She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "Crabdad was even making his concerned click-y noises at you."

Dave's lusus had climbed halfway out of its nest in the corner. When he listened carefully, Dave could hear the quiet clicking noise reserved for when it was worried for its wiggler. The clicking had grown less frequent the older Dave got, as his lusus switched from coddling him to preparing him to survive in the real world where everything was out to fucking cull him, but they were early enough in the timeline that his lusus still gave him a little more leeway for shit like nightmares.

The hive was almost unrecognizable as the same Sgrub-influenced wreck from the present -- or future, or whatever it counted as anymore after so much goddamn time traveling around Alternia. Most notably, his furniture was still in place and nothing had been thrown out the window to make room for an alchemiter or such crap. The walls were a little too barren, not yet covered in the ironic posters his younger self would collect over the next sweep, but it was almost possible to lie back against the couch and pretend all the shit from Sgrub was a bad dream.

He sighed and rubbed his gander bulbs. Light still leaked in through the windows, but it would be evening soon enough that there was no point in passing out again. "Why the hell do you even call him that?"

She shrugged. "Because he's your dad and he's a crab." She crawled up to pet along his horn, her fingertips trailing the broken edge. At least the pain had faded after a few nights; it didn't even sting with pressure anymore. She frowned and switched to his intact horn. "You should've slept in your weird anti-nightmare goop again."

"Can't. Past me's gonna be home in like three hours, not enough time for the slime to settle. He might notice some asshole was crashing in his hive." He wrapped an arm around the back of her waist so he didn't knock her over as he sat up. "We better get lost before he's back anyway."

She let out a huff, giving his horn a good squeeze before releasing it. "Past you always ruins our vacations." She shoved herself off his lap and pressed her glasses onto her face.

"If this is a vacation, it's the most conksuckiest one I ever heard of." He stretched as he got to his feet. His muscles hurt from night after night after fucking night of chasing Daveglitch around the timeline. They'd learned the hard way to call it a fucking day before he wore himself out enough to make amateur mistakes, but that didn't mean his body wasn't goddamn sick of the effort already, even with rest in-between.

His lusus came up behind him and shoved its snout against Dave's shoulder, letting out a confused cry.

Dave batted it away. "Yeah, dude, I know I'm a sweep older than I oughta be!"

"Hey, be nicer to Crabdad." Terezi fumbled around until her hand made contact with his lusus's elbow. She followed its limb to pat its claw. "He's just confused why these two coolkids keep barging into his apartment over the years. Where did they come from? Why don't they grace him with their awesome presence more often? Will his baby Dave truly grow up to be that cool?"

Dave always tensed when she got that close to his lusus, but it was too busy sniffing at her to bite, still utterly baffled by this weirdass hot alien who'd taken up with its wiggler. Whatever. So long as it didn't get aggressive towards her.

He headed for the kitchen and called over his shoulder, "He should know damn well that his ward is gonna grow up to be as kickass as I am. He should also be used to us showing up at random by now."

"Yeah, I guess. What are we on now? Day thirty?"

"That shit doesn't convert easy when time looping, but it's night thirty-two by my count." He rummaged through the cupboards for whatever would be easiest to steal without his past self suspecting anything had gone missing. Usually that just meant toast. It was pretty damn hard to notice if toast supplies were down by two servings.

"Guess a Knight of Time would know." Terezi wandered over, smirking. She was so used to crashing in his apartment day after day that she didn't even have to use her cane to get around the place anymore.

He threw together a quick breakfast using as few utensils as possible to lower chances that his past self would notice anything off and passed Terezi a plain slice of toasted loaf. He'd long since learned to stop even asking if she wanted to try grubsauce.

His lusus watched them from afar, sometimes grumbling, rarely wandering over to sniff at Terezi or butt at Dave. Even though it was being a total nuisance, Dave couldn't bring himself to smack it hard across the snout like he used to when it wouldn't give him space. It wasn't being an asshole for once, so why not let it be?

"So, you pulled us out of the fight early yesterday for a reason. What're we doing tonight?" Dave said as he bit into his food, because who the fuck cared if he chewed with his mouth open? Not like she could see it.

"The same thing we do every night, Strider." She held her head high. "Make old cartoon references that aliens won't get!"

He snorted. "There is no such thing as a media reference that I do not get."

"I would take that as such a fucking challenge if we weren't on a schedule." She rubbed a crumb off her lips. "We've got an opportunity to end this at our next stop, which is why I wanted you all rested and refreshed before we took it on."

"Sounds foreboding. What's the plan?"

"Left, up, duck, left again, finish him." She pointed her finger in each relevant direction as she spoke, ending with a flick.

He raised an eyebrow. That sounded way too damn easy and basically the same as all of their previous strategies. "That's it?"

She nodded, smirking a touch. "That, plus I'm hopping in to help your useless ass this time."

"You sure that's a good idea?" He swallowed and cleared his throat, trying not to sound worried at the idea of his matesprit going up against the violentass source of most of their problems. "I'm faster than you and the only reason I've survived against the shithead for this long is 'cos you've been bossing me around."

"We've been chasing him for over thirty days. He's tired and desperate enough that we want to overwhelm him now."

That was not remotely reassuring but it wasn't like he had a chance in hell of talking her out of it. "Okay, but if you die, I'm fucked. I hope you're aware of that."

She patted his shoulder. "I know all too well that I'm the most important person in the universe, don't worry."

He shook his head and wolfed down the rest of his food. If this was seriously the last time he'd have to fight Daveglitch, it couldn't happen soon enough. He just hoped her Seer powers weren't out of whack after such constant use for pretty much a full perigee.

"All right, let's bounce," he said as soon as they were finished and everything was returned to its proper place.

She nodded in his lusus's general direction. "Say bye to him properly first, Dave," she murmured.

"What?"

"Just do it." She nudged him. "Unless you fuck this up, I don't think we're coming back here anymore."

He shrugged but made his way over to his lusus all the same, hand raised in a casual wave. "See ya, dude." He hesitated. "Well. You'll see me anyway." He bumped a fist against his lusus's claw. "Thanks for keeping me safe as a wiggler. Ya did a pretty sweet job of making sure I could fend for myself without you."

It leaned down and bonked its head against Dave's in a rough nuzzle, then shrieked right into his hear duct.

Dave cringed. "Yeah, uh. Miss you too or whatever the hell that was." He patted his lusus's head until it retreated and he could safely return to Terezi's side. "When are we headed?"

She hopped onto his back, wrapping her legs around his waist and flopping her arms over his shoulders. "Twenty thousand six hundred and twelve years, eight months, two days. Past, obviously. The future doesn't last that far."

He equipped his timetables. "Shit, my work's cut out for me."

"Good thing we just rested up then!" Terezi raised an arm and waved. "Thanks for hosting us again, Mr. Crabdad!"

His lusus cocked its head and Dave put his hands to the timetables before it was tempted to bellow at them again. They shot into the past.

He was starting to get the hang of traveling longer distances, swiping his fingers so they were five thousand sweeps back in half a second and still hurtling towards their destination. It took less effort to land twenty thousand years in the past than it had taken the first time he navigated one hundred sweeps back.

The city was nothing more than a town that far in the past, the buildings only a few stories tall at most instead of skyscrapers. It was dark out and the stars were almost as bright and numerous as they'd looked over Rose's hive in the middle of the goddamn ocean. Only two or three trolls were outside but all of them were adults, so they'd landed well before the ban was in effect.

While the witnesses were fewer, they stared more than a city crowd ever bothered. Dave pulled Terezi into the shadows of the nearest building to wait less conspicuously.

Right on schedule, Daveglitch appeared in a flash of red light thirty seconds after them.

He was haggard. Unlike his opponents, he'd had no chance to rest between their fights, as they always caught him at his next destination, and even his half-digital body was wearing down from the stress of a non-stop battle. He was no longer surprised to find Dave already waiting for him. He just raised a sword and flashstepped.

Dave was so used to Daveglitch's rhythm that he didn't even have to equip his weapon until the split second before he threw it up to block Daveglitch's strike. He guessed computers weren't so hot at changing up their tactics in the small ways that mattered.

Instead of ducking back to call emergency orders, Terezi brandished her cane and leapt into the fray. She swung at Daveglitch's back and Dave almost laughed at Daveglitch's bewildered expression as he narrowly dodged her. Yeah, bitch, it was time to get pulverized by the tiny pink alien too.

Daveglitch flashstepped to the air, where Dave could have followed if he wanted to risk getting attacked from any and every direction while Terezi was stuck on the ground. Instead Dave watched for the first sign of a red blur and blocked upwards.

Wow, okay, Terezi could have mentioned who he was ducking from in her orders. She swung her cane at his head and he dropped to his knees to avoid it. Daveglitch was still pressing his attack against Dave's block and the sudden movement threw his momentum off so that he descended a few more inches, in perfect reach for Terezi's cane to clock him on the shoulder.

Daveglitch stumbled to the ground and disappeared in another flashstep before Terezi could strike again.

Dave leapt to his feet to block Daveglitch's inevitable assault. He countered the attack from one side while Terezi swung from the other side, forcing Daveglitch to leap back so fast that he struck a building.

There was only one Seer-mandated order left, but what the fuck did "finish him" even mean beyond a video game reference? Fucking Seers could never just be straightforward about shit. Nah, they had to encourage freewill and all that dumb crap.

They practically had Daveglitch cornered against a wall though, so that was something. He could have gotten past their defenses by taking to the air, but the pressure was enough that he opted to retreat instead: the timetables came out.

It was the closest in proximity to them that he'd ever tried to time travel. Dave was pretty damn sure he'd figured out what "finishing" him entailed.

He flashstepped forward and for once he reached Daveglitch before he could scratch the records. He drove his sword through Daveglitch's left timetable at the same moment that Terezi threw her cane into his right timetable. Both time traveling devices exploded in a flash of red, knocking Dave on his back.

His head spun and he squeezed his eyes shut to fight off the dizziness long enough to sit up. Terezi was likewise on the ground with no injuries worse than some bruising. Daveglitch slumped against the building, his head bowed. His hands flickered with graphical glitches more extreme than usual while the occasional drop of blood spilled off them.

Terezi scrambled to her feet and ran for Dave. "Go, go, go, we're good!" she shouted, almost running past him if he hadn't nabbed her hand. She pulled him to his feet and locked her arms around his shoulders. "We need on the battleship's deck thirty-seven minutes after we left!"

"That is really fucking precise," he said, glancing back at her.

"Call it a gift and don't fuck it up!"

"P1ec*es 0f SHi#t..." Daveglitch's voice was husky beneath the robotic filter. Static billowed around him, violently thrashing in all directions. He raised his head and the one sclera not blocked by static darkened to a red that matched his iris. "I'Ll pu^t y0u w0rthLeSs fu%ckiNg mu**tanTs thr0ughHh t#he w0*rst su*ff/eRing y0ur L1m1teD sp0n*ges ca_n eNd#ure."

Dave snorted. "Yeah, whatever. Enjoy linear life like some kinda regular mortal, dude. I'm sure you'll have shittons of time to make us mutants suffer." He pulled out his timetables, also known as the only viable time travel devices left on Alternia because, fuck yeah, mission accomplished. "All two of us, me and you."

And Dirk. Wait, fuck, goddamn, whoops.

He'd already set his fingers on the timetables to send them a decent ten thousand sweeps forward, straight back to the present. A mess of static flashstepped towards them and only had inches to go before their surroundings tore away in the haze of time travel.

Daveglitch's robotic scream of fury echoed in Dave's ears long after it had fallen silent.

* * *

Why was he stuck with the suckiest task aside from Karkat? Everyone else got to be all heroic and shit, but John only got to do boring stuff. Even a drone outbreak wasn't that exciting once he got into the rhythm of blasting them all safely out of range every time they tried to converge, save for a sole pioneer that he allowed to continue its journey; he hit that one with a mini whirlwind once it was close enough that Karkat could chop its head off.

Oh well, he supposed doing the small but necessary shit that no one else wanted to deal with came with the territory of friendleader. It kept the nuisances out of Jane and Dirk's hair, too.

He was pretty damn sure Jane could take on a small army of drones one-handed if she wanted, but she was having enough trouble keeping Daveglitch under control even with Dirk's help. She narrowly kept up with his flashstepping, only blocking with a split second to spare sometimes. John winced at each close call.

At least Dirk could take some of the heat off of her and match Daveglitch for speed, though John wasn't so sure he was fully recovered from the whole "tortured and imprisoned for sweeps and sweeps" shit. He stumbled more than once while John was glancing over, though he was lucky enough that it only happened when Jane had Daveglitch's attention.

Sometimes Daveglitch tried to break out of the fight. They headed him off before he could get far and herded him away from going anywhere near Rose and the others. Jane knew how to fly and she cut Daveglitch off in the air when needed, but Dirk had probably spent too long being locked up to have learned his God Tier powers; a fight with a deadly flashstepping asshole wasn't a good time to experiment with flight.

John caught the last drone in a twister and hurtled it against the deck, dropping the wind so Karkat could leap in and stab it in the back of its head.

"Is that it?" John said, scanning the sky for any remaining enemies he might have missed, but the only movement he spotted aside from static was over by the bow where the Lalondes kept blasting the remaining drones.

"It'd fucking better be." Karkat wrinkled his nose as he yanked his sickle out of the drone's skull and shook some of the blood off. "If I wanted to do more repetitive busy work, I'd dig out one of my old math textbooks."

"I'd better go make sure Rose and the others are okay then," John said as he took to the air.

"Yeah, don't mind me." Karkat put away his weapons and crossed his arms. "I'll just be here watching everyone else reach higher levels of badass than I could ever hope to accomplish because I'm too valuable or whatever to risk getting a goddamn boo-boo." He rolled his eyes.

"Dude, you just killed a bunch of drones." John waved an arm at the mound of corpses they'd compiled. Hmm, that was actually kind of gross. Maybe he needed to play a little clean-up duty before he left. "Even adult trolls have trouble fighting those things off!"

"And my windy boyfriend stunned them for me! Big fucking whoop!"

John sighed. Karkat's tantrums were a lot funnier when they weren't so self-deprecating. As it was, they almost sounded depressing. "Well, durh, what else was I supposed to do? Let you handle it by yourself?" he said, trying not to smirk as he egged Karkat on.

Karkat bristled and turned his glare on John. "What the hell gives you the goddamn nerve to think I couldn't have beaten those spiky giant assholes to their knees until they begged for mercy from their alien conqueror? After I'd stuffed a few heads up asses, the rest would be too busy shitting themselves with fear to remember how to fly right and they'd plunge into the ocean and drown in a sea of their own filth! I swear to God..."

John chuckled under his breath as Karkat dove into a full-blown rant, load gaper humor and all. Yeah, it was waaay better when Karkat was being an arrogant bulgelicker instead of stewing over nothing.

John maneuvered the wind to shove drone corpses off the side of the ship. They left behind unappealing bloodstains but that sounded easier to clean up inside Jade and Kanaya's new dimension compared to a pile of rotting bodies. They weren't even edible, he was pretty sure, which made them a morbid waste of space.

Jane's voice broke through Karkat's tirade. "Dirk!" she shouted.

John dropped the breeze, wrenching his gaze towards the battle just in time to see Daveglitch slip past Dirk's defenses and kick him straight in the chest. Dirk slammed into a wall so hard that his sword flew out of his grip and clattered to the ground. He slumped over, struggling just to stay on his feet.

Jane lunged at Daveglitch before he could land a more dangerous blow against Dirk. She must have grown reckless in her haste, as she left herself wide open: he blocked her stab and rammed his elbow into her solar plexus. She crashed to her knees, gasping for breath, and he wasted no time in flashstepping a good twenty feet behind her and flinging his sword at her back. He flashstepped away again immediately after.

John swore and redirected the wind into a concentrated blast, shoving the sword off-course so that it crashed harmlessly against the deck instead of so much as touching Jane.

The relief didn't last long. Where the hell had Daveglitch disappeared to and how much damage was he about to cause? What if he'd broken away to target Jade and Kanaya next? Would the Lalondes and Jake stand a chance against him?

Daveglitch hadn't run away though. He reappeared to snap up Dirk's fallen sword, then shot at Dirk, the tip of the blade aimed to plunge straight into his chest.

John almost snapped his eyes shut; he really didn't want to watch one of their ancestors get skewered, but there was no way to intervene either. If he'd even blinked, he might have missed a red light flash above them.

In the split second before Daveglitch's stab made contact, Dave dropped down and slammed a kick into Daveglitch with enough force to send him hurtling. Daveglitch landed hard, scraping a few more feet across the deck and almost hitting the edge of the ship before he slid to a halt.

"Sneak attack!" Terezi shouted from her spot on Dave's back, pumping a fist high above her head.

With a flick of his wrists, Dave's timetables disappeared and were replaced by one of his broken swords. "Miss us, motherfucker?" he said, sliding into an offensive stance. One of his horns was broken off at the halfway point, but otherwise he looked no worse for wear.

Daveglitch raised his head and let out a furious hiss. John couldn't remember seeing all of Dave's fangs bared so clearly before, and maybe the excess static was enhancing them somehow, but holy crap, they looked sharp.

"Yeah, next time we'll write you." Dave shifted as Terezi hopped off of him. "You hanging in there, bro?" he said, edging over to shield Dirk.

Dirk's shoulders still trembled from the effort but he stood straight by leaning his side against the wall. "Just a little off my game tonight," he said, his voice rough, "but I'm not down yet by a long shot."

"Damn right you're not. I need another flashstepper around here before I face off against this jackwad again." Dave took off. At first it looked as if he was going to jump Daveglitch while the bastard was down, but instead Dave swept up the katana that had once more fallen to the ground. "Dirk!" He tossed the sword over to Dirk, who snatched it mid-air.

Daveglitch climbed to his feet in no hurry, his eyes narrow as he studied Dave. A few of his fangs remained on display as he curled his lip.

No one moved for a moment, then Daveglitch flashstepped away and Dave disappeared after him. The Daves became red blurs to all except maybe Dirk. Daveglitch's fallen sword disappeared off the deck, presumably back into the hands of its owner judging by the clashing of metal that followed.

Karkat let out a huff, crossing his arms as he watched the fray from the sidelines. "Of course fuckface gets to save the day like some kind of action hero," he grumbled.

"Hey, even a dork like Dave gets his moments, man." John shrugged, waiting for an opening where he was confident enough to duck past the Striders. He darted to Jane's side, kneeling next to her. "Are you okay, Jane?" He held a hand out.

She breathed sharply between her teeth as if she was in pain, then raised herself up, her eyes flashing with anger. "I'm going to give that fucking dunderhead a beating he won't soon forget!" she shouted, brandishing her fork.

"Um. Okay." At least she wasn't badly hurt.

Jane ran into the blurred mess of a fight. As if on cue, Dirk took his first step without stumbling and flashstepped forward to join them.

It was almost mesmerizing to watch the Striders trade blows, while Jane somehow managed to keep up with their speed and ferocity well enough despite her inability to flashstep. She dodged around the edges of the battle and blocked all of Daveglitch's attempts to escape when she wasn't stabbing her fork into the fray.

"Behind you, Dave!" Terezi shouted, along with the occasional "Right!" or "Up!" or similar directions, even though she definitely couldn't see the flashstepping any better than John could, on account of being fucking blind and stuff.

"So when are we done with this guy and what the hell are we even supposed to do with him?" Dave shouted during one of the few moments that he slowed out of a flashstep.

John hopped to his feet and into the air. "Uhhh, I'll ask Rose!" He shot off, stopped short, and hurried back to give Karkat a kiss on the cheek.

Karkat gave him a startled stare. "What the fuck was that?"

"I thought it was rule to do romantic schlock when we're in danger!" John threw his arms up in a shrug.

"What?" Karkat facepalmed. "No! That's in movies! This is a life or death situation!" He pointed towards the bow of the ship. "You get your lazy ass moving so we'll actually survive and then we can kiss later!"

John groaned. "Okay! Jeez!" He flew off and only allowed himself to look back twice.

The dimensional tear Jade and Kanaya were making had grown from a decent hole to an opening the size of a large hivestem -- probably wider, even. It looked like a black hole that could swallow the entire ship. If John hadn't known where it came from, it would have given him shivers to see such large empty blackness sitting in the middle of the sky. Not that it was out of place, with the rest of the sky covered in static and glitches and shit.

There were still a couple of drones in the air at the front of the ship, but the long-ranged weapon wielders were making short work of them. Rose was still fighting even though Roxy and Jake had joined her, but her shoulders drooped and her brow was covered in sweat.

John dove for her, landing at her side and holding an arm out to her. "Holy shit, Rose, you look awful!"

"Thank you, John." She lowered her weapons and rested her head against his shoulder. "That's exactly what a girl wants to hear after a grueling battle."

Roxy scanned the sky as the last drone tumbled down. "Welp, that was fucking insane. But, uh, on the upside, I am pretty damn sure we got all the drones dead now and we didn't even have to track them down."

They'd already done a decent job of shooting the drones so they fell off the side of the ship rather than stack up like garbage on the deck, but Roxy kicked another one off the edge so that it plummeted into the ocean.

Jake peered over the side to watch. "Are we done then?"

John perked up. "Okay, yeah, that's actually why I'm here! Dave's back, Daveglitch is still a giant asshole, and Jane and the others need to know what the hell they're gonna do with the glitch now."

Rose nodded, breathing deeply. "One moment." She shuddered and lifted her head from John's shoulder. "Jade, since Kanaya can't fly, she won't be able to hold the portal open once we move the ship into it. Can you handle stabilizing it by yourself now that it's already prepared?"

"I'm sure I can!" Jade said with a smile.

"Then we're almost ready." Rose pointed her index and middle fingers at Jake and Roxy. "You two, get back to the bridge and fly us in," she said, using her weird empress tone again, except it wasn't as effective when her voice was tired.

Roxy pulled a face. "Shit, we just came from there."

"Well," Jake shrugged with a smile, "a little extra exercise isn't the worst comeuppance we could have received for being so careless as to release those drones incorrectly."

"Sure, but the busywork still suuucks," Roxy said with a drawn-out groan.

Jake nudged her shoulder. She rolled her eyes and grinned, darting after him as he ran off.

Rose waited until Roxy was out of sight, then rubbed at her temple. "John, tell Jane and Dirk to stun Daveglitch long enough to get him off-board. If that involves damaging him, then so be it. I don't imagine anything we can do would kill him even if we tried, at this point."

John was ready to take off at "tell Jane," but he paused as the rest of his orders sank in. "Wait, we're leaving him behind? Won't he die here, with the universe imploding and shit?"

"What exactly do you think will happen if he enters this new dimension with us?" Rose said wearily.

"But we can't just let him down like that!" Jade said, her chipper determination fading as she frowned.

"Forging on without him is the only way to secure victory." Rose stared directly into John's gaze and held it. "You trust my judgment, don't you?"

"Well, obviously," he said, trying not to fidget.

"Rose, please!" Jade looked ready to give chase but planted her feet when Kanaya gave her a panicked look. "TG doesn't deserve this, even if the glitch part of him does! We need to help him!"

Rose gave John's shoulder a shove. "John, go!"

"John, don't!"

"Sorry, Jade!" John stumbled before following the momentum of the shove. "Rose probably knows better than we do!"

"But she's more brutal too and you know it!"

He cringed. "Sorry!" he shouted over his shoulder, though he was flying fast enough that his voice might have been lost on the wind already.

John flew at full speed towards Karkat and the others. Karkat had joined Terezi in observing the battle -- well, he observed and she probably just listened or something. He was much tenser than she was, his hands twitching at his sides, but what else was new?

John landed next to Terezi. "Rose says we need to get Daveglitch off-board and then we're done."

Terezi's mouth twisted. She cocked her head and furrowed her brow, silent for a long moment. "Not just yet," she said, playing with the handle of her cane.

"Wait, what's the plan?" Karkat said, glancing over.

"Don't worry about it, Karkat." She fumbled for his shoulder, giving it a rough pat when she found it.

He glowered. "You know what would make me stop worrying? Not that. Telling me not to fucking worry just means you've got something so freakishly fucked up hiding up your sleeve that anyone who bore witness to it would projectile vomit in disgust and horror! Are you trying to spare me from unintentionally showing off my Exorcist impression, Terezi? Because if it's bad enough you're scared my head will spin while spewing pea soup if I'm in on it, then I can fucking guarantee I'm going to flip my shit once you put it into action! I'll fling so much shit that-" He yelped as the ship trembled beneath their feet.

The engines roared and the wind picked up. The tip of the ship inched forward into the pitch blackness Jade and Kanaya had built.

Terezi's mouth twitched into a smirk. "Here were go," she murmured. "Egbert Senior! Find an opening and get over here!"

Jane swiped at a red blur, her weapon clanging against metal, before she broke away. "Please say this is important," she said as she darted over.

Terezi waved her hand dismissively. "Can you work your psychic powers here and give us an edge?"

Jane's eyes widened. "Not a snowball's chance in the Alternia sun! I can't dig deep enough through the glitch's haze to reach his actual mind."

"You're not that useless and we both know it!" Terezi snapped, stomping into Jane's personal space until Jane had to step back to avoid a collision. "Give me something to work with here, Egbert!"

Jane chewed her lower lip and glanced down. "I can throw a cog in his workings," she said after a moment. She raised her eyes. "It may only last a split second, and I can't control him, but it should stop him in his tracks as we vie for dominance."

Terezi grinned wide. "That's more like it!" She raised her voice. "Non-glitchy Strider boys, on my mark, go for the kill!" She shoved at Jane. "You're on the same mark, lady."

Jane nodded, putting her weapon away and raising her hands to her chest as if she was about to clasp them in prayer.

Karkat looked from Terezi to Jane. "The fuck are we waiting f-"

"Mark!" Terezi shouted.

Jane held her hands on either side of her temple, her gaze intent on the battle. Daveglitch jerked to a halt in the midst of his flashstepping. His immobility only lasted half a moment, but that's all Dirk and Dave needed to flank him from front and back and drive their swords through his chest and stomach.

John winced.

Daveglitch's limbs jolted as he broke free from Jane's hold, then he went limp, not even reacting when Dirk and Dave yanked their blades free.

Daveglitch didn't bleed much. Static leaked out of his wounds instead, though it had more of a red hint to it than usual. His sword slipped from his hand but he stayed on his feet, floating a couple inches off the ground.

"W*ha-teVer." Daveglitch's voice was monotonous. He craned his neck, staring at the static that swirled above them all the way to the stars. The sky cracked with a white glow. "1t d0es/n't e%ven mAtt)er aaAan*ym0re. F_0r y0u. 0^r us."

"John, wind!" Terezi shouted. "Get rid of him!"

John took a deep breath, gathering the air around him, then blasted it at Daveglitch hard enough to knock him off the edge of the ship. He didn't fall but, as the ship continued to inch forward, he stayed behind.

They all went tense as they waited for Daveglitch's next move, but even though he was in easy range of the ship, he just floated in place as the ship moved on. Either he was too wounded to restart the fight or too sick of their faces to bother. Or both.

Dirk slumped and Jane rushed to his side to give him someone to lean on. Dave was the only one who stayed on high alert as everyone else relaxed. Mostly everyone else.

"W-wait..." Karkat's voice caught and his eyes went wide. "Wait, what the hell are you doing?" He spun on them, throwing an arm towards Daveglitch. "We can't fucking leave him like this!"

Dave snorted. "Doomed timelines aren't supposed to leave their garbage in the alpha, dumbass." He kept a tight grip on his sword. If the direction of his shades were anything to go by, his gaze was locked on Daveglitch. "The guy knew what he was signing up for, even if it's coming a million damn sweeps late."

"Aradia's still fucking alive and she was doomed too!" Karkat screamed.

"Look, whoever the hell that is, I'm pretty fucking sure she's not a glitch monster intent on murdering everyone!"

Karkat turned to John, his shoulders trembling and his eyes wet. "You're not seriously going to let your friend just... just fucking die here?"

John frowned. That did sound really mean and awful and bad, but... Rose knew better, probably, and Dave agreed with her, so it had to be okay, right? "Sorry, Karkat," he said with a shrug, trying not to think too hard about it.

Karkat curled his lip and backed away. He spun around and ran for the edge of the ship. "Fuck this shit!"

"Karkat?" John's bloodpusher jumped into his throat.

Karkat ran for Daveglitch and leapt off the ship. John could scarcely breathe in the seconds between Karkat's feet leaving the deck and his hands seizing hold of Daveglitch's shoulders.

John shot forward. "Karkat!"

Dave caught John's arm as he passed and wrenched him back. "Are you fucking insane?"

"Don't you dare fucking stop me, Strider!" John tried to wrest free but Dave only redoubled his efforts in wrapping his arms tightly around John's torso and trapping him in place.

Karkat clung to Daveglitch for support, his legs flailing in the air for a hold that didn't exist. The static around Daveglitch billowed away from anything Karkat touched but returned to its place as soon his hold shifted.

"You can hate me all you want later," Dave said through gritted teeth, "but I'm not going to fucking let you get killed for nothing!"

"I'm not leaving without him!" John didn't even recognize his own voice, it was so strangled and shrill. The ship wasn't going to be parallel with them much longer. Karkat was getting farther and farther out of reach with each second.

Daveglitch barely seemed to pay any heed to the brown alien futilely trying to fight the static off of him. He sneered and slowly raised an arm, grabbing a sword from his specibus.

John's bloodpusher skipped a beat. Daveglitch was going to stab right through Karkat's skull and there was no way to reach them in time, even if he broke free right that second. There was no way to even manipulate the wind to stop him. There was no way Karkat could defend himself from that position.

John's mind raced in a panic, as if he could reach out to Karkat somehow, as if Daveglitch could actually hear his pleas and demands if he thought them hard enough: Don't don't don't Dave NO don't you dare don't you dare don't you DARE

ERR0R: f0-RE1gn ent1T/Y deT=ected; intr-+uder.delete(); stop it. in-tr&uder.DELETE(); dave, stop. GE/T 0U_T not on your goddamn life! sy/YstTEm.reb00t(); ERR0R: C/Annot reb00t wh1-LeEEe f0r/EignEnTtity.presence = true; int=rudDder.shutdown(); i'm not a fucking computer! now DO. NOT. MOVE. err0r err0r err0r err0r h0st has st0pped Re/sp0nd1ngG host.shutdown(); NO YOU FUCKING DON'T YOU STOP THAT COMMAND RIGHT NOW, BULGEASS! err0r: c0ul/d n0t shut down; ret=ry() rE/try() r-etR&y() dave, can you fucking hear me?? err0r: h-0sT 1ntegr1t/y c0m*pr0m1^ssSSed; host.delete(); DAVE!!! ERR0RrrRRRrr wh0...? dave???? what... 1s that? it's your name, bro! remember? .....host.name = NULL no hey c'mon, stay with me! you're not a computer! you're dave! 1m... s0rry... i know, buddy. it's okay. just hang in there. 1 cant.... yes you fucking can! i'm blocking out the glitch's command i think! so just concentrate on me! 1...... cant... you CAN! i know it's hard! i know you can't remember!! but just trust me, bro, don't move right now. ......G... T....? yeah, dude. it's ghostyTrickster. now listen to me: DROP. THE. FUCKING. SWORD.

John's vision swam. He wasn't even sure what had just passed through his mind, but it had happened in the span of half a second.

Daveglitch was frozen in place. Even the static flickering from his body had gone dormant. His fingers loosened and his sword slipped from his grip. The blade fell safely out of reach, though it nicked Karkat's hand in its descent.

Karkat let out a yelp and yanked his arm back. For a stomach-knotting second, John thought he was about to lose his grip and go plummeting, but Karkat quickly wrenched his hand back to cling to Daveglitch for dear life. His bleeding fingers slipped into the open wound on Daveglitch's chest.

Static erupted in all directions out of Daveglitch's body. Some of it tried to rebound, but no sooner had it gotten anywhere near Karkat than it was repelled even farther than before. The air grew so heavy with the banished static that it was almost difficult to see Karkat in the flickering mess.

Once the burst of static slowed to a trickle, Daveglitch's eyes rolled back. He collapsed and fell out of sight, Karkat still clinging to him.

Panic clawed at every edge of John's mind. He gritted his teeth and blasted Dave with the thought Let GO!

Dave's grip immediately relaxed. John wrenched free and moved faster than he'd ever flown in his life, using the wind to accelerate his God Tier flight beyond its normal speed. He shot off the ship and downwards, chasing Karkat's scream.

The air whipped at his face and it was hard to breathe, but he pushed his speed all the more. They were so close and the ground was still so far away. He just needed a little further. He could have called out to Karkat, but he saved his energy for reaching out both hands towards him.

His fingertips only grazed Karkat's shoulder at first, but he inched closer until he wrapped his arms tightly around both of them, digging his fingers into their clothing.

"Oh god, oh god, oh fuck, oh god," Karkat whimpered, still clinging to Daveglitch for all he was worth.

John swooped them into an arc until their descent flipped upwards. Only then did he let his speed fall back to normal. He still moved as fast as he reasonably could, but there was no way in hell he could keep up that panicked momentum on the flight back.

The ship had already disappeared. The sky was crumbling above them and the air crackled with static. When he dared a glance downwards, the ocean looked warped, as if it was being manipulated or mutilated in a freakish 3D art software.

He kept flying upwards because there was nowhere else to go and there was no way in hell Rose or Jade or Dave would ever leave him behind. He just had to find them.

Where had the ship been? It was just a little higher, wasn't it? There were no landmarks up in the sky and clouds were traitorous bastards that never stopped moving, especially when they were glitching up. Even with the world breaking around them, how could he lose sight of a giantass hole the size of the empress's battleship?

John reached what felt like the right altitude and spun in a circle. Static, a crack in the universe, more static, a cloud turning pixelated... and a dark tear sitting in midair like a creepy black hole. It was way smaller than before, but they wouldn't need that much space to enter it anyway. A figure floated in the center of it, holding their arms out as if keeping the tear open by sheer strength.

John broke into a grin. Jade was holding it open for them.

"We're gonna make it," he said.

"Don't jinx it, you dumb fuck!" Karkat's voice broke as if it couldn't decide whether to be an angry retort or a terrified wail.

John couldn't help laughing. He hugged Karkat closer and shot towards Jade. He dodged around thick clouds of static, just to be safe, and accelerated to full speed. Everything was falling apart around them and there was no way in hell they were going down with it in the last seconds.

He crashed into Jade and they tumbled through the portal together. The tear in space sealed behind them as soon as John snatched Jade away from it, blocking off the static and glitching from following them.

Their momentum was too fast to put the brakes on immediately, so John spiraled over the battleship and slowed with each circle downwards they made. He spotted Rose with Kanaya, and Dave with Terezi, and Dirk with Jane below them, while Roxy and Jake were probably inside the ship still.

Despite his best attempts at a smooth landing, they crashed on the deck in a heap.

Ow, fuck, that was going to leave some bruises, but he couldn't actually give a shit. His matesprit was in his arms, and Jade was hugging all three of them, and Daveglitch was... Well, Daveglitch was kind of catatonic again, but he was alive and he wasn't trying to kill them and that was pretty cool.

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