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microsoftedgy69 · 5 years

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Goliath, part 1

[prologue]

-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] began pestering tremoloTangible [TT] at 11:11 -- TG: yo TT: Hey, what’s up? TG: have u checked up on our tl lately TT: Depends. What century? TG: ours TT: Then no. I haven’t been there in several months. TT: Why?

TG: k so TG: the carapaces are still there right TG: and i sometimes check up on em to make sure theyre doin ok. get enough to eat etc TG: but theyve all been losin their shit lately and i mean its kinda hard to talk to em properly but i dont wanna beat around the bush here so im not gettin into that TG: theres been some concerning stuff happening on our good old earth al TG: my alternian is p rusty and my translator gave me some weird results here n there but im gonna send u an article abt it and trust that ur language pack can handle it -- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] has sent file ______.png --

You don’t have blood that can turn cold. You don’t have breath that can stutter in your chest. But some years ago, you were a human kid, and in this very moment, you remember perfectly how all these things felt.

TG: al

You reread the article. In your mind, your non-existent blood goes from freezing to boiling. You almost forget to switch your language pack to English when you reply to them.

TG: u still there TT: Yes. TT: Sorry. TT: She is turning Earth into a military base. TG: yeah thats what i was getting from it too TT: Hmm. TG: i dont like what that prob means 4 the carapaces TG: cant imagine shell give a shit about em yfm TT: Yeah. TG: idk abt ur part of the world TG: u said the apartment is underwater anyway aint it TT: It is, yes. TT: It’s still… I don’t know. TT: This might be silly. TT: But it’s still my home. TG: its not silly TG: this whole thing feels wrong TT: Yeah. TG: sooo TG: what do we do abt this TT: What? TG: we should b able to do something about this right TT: You wanna stop the Condesce? TG: ppl in other timelines have done it TT: That is correct. TG: we could do it TG: right TT: I have drafted a plan or two in the past. TG: o have u TT: I wasn’t sure if you were interested. TG: im pretty interested these days TG: the others not so much tbh but i cant blame em TG: theyre worried bc u know. i happen to be a lot less immortal than her or you TT: I’ve planned for that. TG: lmaooo TT: We’ll get you immortal and kill the Condesce, Rox. TG: man u rly are him huh TT: Told you.

Your name is Alan Strider. Sometimes, when you jerk awake at night, you are sure, one hundred percent sure, that Her Imperious Condescension is not done with you yet. Sometimes, when you sit on the deck of the boat you live on, recovering from nightmares, you think that she might come for you one day.

When that happens, you make plans.

You prepare.

It’ll be you who comes for her.

It’s you who’s not done yet.

i wanna hunt like david. i wanna kill me a giant man.

Roxy looks good when they come to meet you by your storage unit in Brazil. Grown up, you think, and determined. Nevertheless, something flickers over their face when you show them what's inside; when they lay eyes on the dismembered imperial drone you stole from your home timeline. You can relate. Your face doesn't show as much, but you feel the same every time you think about it.

You sit on scrap metal and talk about your plans. You have several, for different scenarios, and you accept what Roxy wants to change about them. The phrase Are you sure you want to do this is uttered back and forth a couple of times, before you both understand that yes. You're sure.

The way you end up agreeing on is simple enough -- if it works, you end up with a dead Condesce, a conditionally immortal Roxy, and a destroyed spare body of yours. If it doesn't, you have a list of other plans you can resort to. Stakes are high, but you've thought this through.

It's worth it.

So, you and Roxy get to work. You have to program the drone to go back home to mommy -- step one of the plan is both to find out her whereabouts, and to start coaxing her back to the planet she's having rebuilt. It might take a while, so it'll give you both time to… well, to gather up your things and make arrangements like pet care in your absence and telling your respective friends what's going on, you guess. You're not looking forward to this part of your masterplan, but you barely have time to think about it.

Anything that has you accessing an imperial drone's software is still prone to give you flashbacks bad enough to make your mechanical hands shake, so it's good that you have Roxy by your side this time. Practiced as you might be, they are still way better at this than you. You give them pointers to where they’ll find the parts of the programming you need to hijack, just to speed up the whole process, then you leave them be and go do your own work.

Roxy laugh-scoffed at the way your notes concerning the drone looked. When you disassembled it, you made yourself a map so you could put it back together, but it doesn’t look like something anyone else could ever decipher. It works for you, though. Part for part, the heap of metal starts resembling the huge beasts that almost killed the both of you on numerous occasions again.

“You wanna look over this before I finish it off?” Roxy asks eventually.

“I’m sure you did great,” you say, but you want to look over it anyway. You don’t get shivers down your spine now that you’re a robot, but you feel the sense of cold and dread in the back of your mind, going over the very program that made your lives hell, that both saved you and killed Dirk. Roxy reaches for your hand, and you take it. You exchange another We’re really doing this, huh? look, but nobody says it out loud anymore. You say, “Looks good.”

You captchalogue the finished drone, then transportalize back to Roxy’s part of your home planet, and release it. It’ll find its way back to the Condesce, and then promptly self-destruct, leaving in its wake only a message to goad her back to Earth. Once she’s made it back here, you’ll move on to the next part of the plan.

Until then, for now, you will wait.

Roxy hugs you before they disappear back to a different timeline’s Barcelona, and you disappear back to your boat in a different timeline’s Indian Ocean. Only once you are home and alone do you allow yourself to actually feel something.

Everything from Roxy messaging you to your feet hitting the deck of your yacht again happened without pause, your mind going on autopilot. Something was happening, so something had to be done in response, your plans had to be set in motion, there was no time to think about any of this. No time to fully realize what’s going on.

You stand there in the scorching evening sun of your current timezone, stare out at the horizon, and wait for the fear to come.

What hits you instead is cold, calculating, ready-to-maim anger.

You are not scared of her. Not when you know exactly what you’re going to do, where, how, and when you’re going to do it, to bring her down. You’ve been scared your whole life, and it’s enough, now. It’s enough. She’s taken your family from you, your childhood, your friends, your life as a human kid. If after all she’s put you through there is one person who has the right to destroy your home planet as well, it sure as shit should be you.

You square your shoulders, flex your hands, and refocus. You’ll have to talk to Alma to make sure you can time this coup just right to be back home for his big day.

And before that, after months and months of fighting it, you’ll have to tell your boyfriend that you’re doing the exact thing you promised him not to do.

There’s no going back now. You’ll make whatever sacrifices you need to end it once and for all.

#action post #posted ooc #goliath #:3c #big plot happenings. beeg plot happenings #if all goes well this'll have four parts #over the next............. month im guessing #oh (rubs my grimy hands together) i have such plans

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edenfalling · 7 years

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Ooh! Homestuck, Dirk, Roxy, cuddle. It's the post-Sburb world, and there are too many people all the time, and only Dirk and Roxy want to flee screaming to a (pair of) faraway mountains. Bring back the blissful solitude of the post-apocalypse.

Notcompliant with the credits snapchats, because reasons. :) [2,700 words]

---------------------------------------------Some Little Talk aWhile of Me and Thee---------------------------------------------

The stupid part is, up until that one moment, Roxy washaving a really good night. All her friends (except Dirk, who hung grimly onthrough dinner and absconded immediately thereafter) together in one room, enoughdinner for everyone to eat their fill and then dessert on top of that, thepleasant ache of an honest day's work building the infrastructure of their newworld... yeah. A good night.

Except the thing is, as much as she needs people -- and sheneeds people a lot, needs that feedback loop of attention paid and returned --there's a big difference between hanging out online and hanging out with adozen people jammed together in a single room. And she hasn't been gettingalone time during the days either, always busy working with a crew ofcarapacians (who at least are quiet) and consorts (who are emphatically not).

Roxy doesn't notice the slow buildup of stress, but she canpinpoint exactly when the night tips from I-can-manage to oh-god-make-it-stop.

She's been kibitzing on the edges of Rose, John, and Jane'smeal planning session (defusing any baby disagreements before they grow intoanything serious), keeping half an ear on the Pictionary session Callie,Kanaya, and Terezi have going in the far corner, and watching Jade gleefullyannihilate Dave and Karkat at Mario Kart. It's maybe a little bit much to betracking all at once, but the satisfaction outweighs the strain until Davethrows a piece of popcorn at Jade, who teleports it into the tangle of Karkat'shair, who draws breath in preparation for an inside-voice-what-inside-voicerant, and Roxy is abruptly and completely done.Zip, zilch, finito, cutlery shop's closed up and all the merchandise is gone.

She shoves herself up from the warm and squashy armchair shestaked out as her private territory back when they first built this grouphouse, and says to nobody in particular: "I'm gonna go check on Dirk, it'sbeen a while since he noped out and I want to make sure he hasn't broken his neckor started a robot apocalypse in his sleep."

Rose and Jane break off their debate over the relativemerits of fish tacos and sushi to give her a pair of sharp glances. John justlooks adorkably confused.

Roxy dredges up a smile from her last reserves of sociability.

It must not be very convincing, because Rose frowns andtenses like she's going to ask if Roxy needs any help, or maybe even stand upand give her a hug. Her concern is like a warm mug of hot chocolate, but thething about warm mugs of hot chocolate is they're awesome on a frigid winterday after messing around in the snow for a couple hours, but this specific timeand place are more like a metaphorical scorching summer day when you're alreadysugared out and anything sweet makes you want to gag. In other words, amomdaughter's loving attention is nice in theory, but it's not conducive tonoping the fuck out of the room, not to mention if anyone touches her rightnow, Roxy might actually break down and scream.

Fortunately, Jane rescues her.

She does something to Rose -- elbows her? kicks her underthe coffee table? hard to say -- and while Rose is busy trying to regather hertrain of thought, Jane grins at Roxy, somehow managing to make the expressionboth obviously fake and equally obviously made of 24-carat solid goldsincerity.

"That sounds like an excellent plan!" she says."When you find him, tell him that Jade needs to run the latest plans forthe electricity grid past him, particularly the battery storage systems forevening the solar and wind outputs. I think the files are in the civilengineering dropbox account, so he shouldn't need to ask her for anything untilhe's finished reviewing and annotating them."

Roxy nods.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Scram!" Janemakes little shooing motions with her hands.

Rose, apparently catching on to Roxy's actual state of mind,smiles benevolently and waves goodbye. "Au revoir," she says in herperpetually dry tone. "If anyone asks where you are, I'll tell them I sentyou to give daddy dearest my love, perhaps in the form of seagull pie."

Jane rolls her eyes. John snickers and sticks out his tonguein mostly mock-disgust.

"Thanks, guys," Roxy manages to say, and flees.

---------------

After a indeterminate period of time trying not tohyperventilate in her en suite bathroom, she sits cross-legged on her bed andwonders if she ought to make good on her escape excuse.

Dirk's even worse with large groups than Roxy is and doesn'tmake any attempt to pretend otherwise, but he's still human (no matter how muchhe sometimes dislikes that fact) and even the most introverted human is, atbase, a social animal. And not all contact has to be as overwhelming as groupevents.

Roxy pulls out her phone, briefly contemplates calling him,then tosses that plan right the fuck out the window. Voices are bullshit. Textis their mutual mother tongue, and she'd bet at least half a baby universe Dirkisn't up for vocalizing right now.

-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified[TT] --

TG: the thing nobody ever tells you about other people ishow fuckin NOISY they areTG: amiright?TG: i never thought id say this, but i miss ourpost-apocalyptic disaster zoneTG: not like, the looming threat of the batterwitch n shit,but the quietTG: maybe even some of the survivalist stuffTG: rose and the crockerberts gave me the weirdest look wheni said we should make seagull pie for our next movie night extravaganzaTG: there is GOOD EATING on seagullsTG: and they make a nice change from fish you know?TG: i thought id finally gotten away from descaling fishwhen we ditched sea hitlers water hellscape, but nopeTG: here we are back to fish for every meal that doesnt comestraight from our alchemiters and dwindling stocks of gristTG: (its ok you dont have to talk back if you dont want to)TG: (i just wanted to bitch to someone who gets it)TT: It's cool.TT: I know exactlywhat you mean about the quiet.TT: If you're game toendure the ultra minimum of human contact, i.e., breathing within the samecubic meter of air, I'm on the roof by the south chimney.TT: If not, I can seethe dock and it's currently unoccupied.TT: Assuming this isa day when the incessant susurrus of waves will invoke positive memories ratherthan negative ones, that could make a decent temporary retreat.TG: awww, ur a sweetie, sitting watch over our friends likea depressed gargoyleTG: on due consideration im ok with breathing your grosspre-breathed airTG: maybe if we get really daring we can work up to touchingpinky fingers!TG: le gaspTT: Scandalous. What will the neighbors say?TT: But I'm down forperversion if you are, Ms. Lalonde.TG: k hang onto your panties, im coming up

-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] ceased pestering timaeusTestified[TT] --

---------------

Roxy scrambles over the edge of the roof (she could justfly, of course, but where's the fun in that?) to find Dirk not just near thesouth chimney but actually curled up in the angle where it meets the solartiles, using the heat radiating from the bricks to counter the early autumnchill. He has his shades off in deference to the darkness, but his eyes are closedinstead of aimed up toward the frankly gorgeous light of the pink and whitemoons, both approaching full tonight.

Roxy flops back against the dark tiles of the roof, armsspread wide, and watches the moons flirt with thin veils of cloud. Her friends'voices drift out of the open windows downstairs, but distance and the ambientsounds of wind and wave blur them into a companionable sort of white noise. Theconsorts' various weekend parties are louder, but further away; noticeable onlywhen a line or two of song finds a favorable breeze or a new branch tossed on abonfire sends a gust of sparks above the trees and roofs of the slowly growingtown.

The carapacians' celebrations, of course, make no sound.

She and Dirk breathe in companionable silence for nearly anhour, while the white moon travels fifteen degrees toward zenith and the pinkmoon nearly twenty degrees in the same direction, edging toward partialeclipse. Roxy's still kind of giddy over the orbital mechanics of a three-bodysystem, and the difference two moons make in the rhythm of the tides. It couldtake years to work the changes into her bones.

She has years tospend on things like that. She spent her whole childhood isolated and trappedunder an incessant, shadowy weight. Now it's gone. She's free. She's not aloneanymore.

It would be nice if she were better at coping with thatchange.

Beside her, Dirk sighs, pulls his legs up to his chest, andrests his face between his knees. Something's gone cockeyed in his head again,and if nobody interrupts him he'll just debate himself into knots and grandiose'for your own good' bullshit stunts.

And hey, an hour of silence isn't enough to get Roxyanywhere near ready to face a crowd, but it's more than enough to talk to heroldest friend.

"The dumbest thing," she says, jumping straight inbecause what's the sense in wasting mouth noises on irrelevancies, "isthat weekend movie nights aren't even party-parties,nothing loud or crazy intense. It's just all our best friends hanging out oncomfy sofas playing goofy sleepover games, but stupid me got so wound up I hadto run screaming into the night. Otherwise I would've lost my shit at them overfish tacos and a popcorn fight, and that's just wrong with a capital R."

"Capital W," Dirk mutters, uncurling slightly andtilting his head until a sliver of orange iris is visible over the edge of hisright knee.

"Pedant," Roxy says, rather than draw attention tohis temporary lack of shades. "I just keep thinking, it shouldn't bug meso much. You've got a perfect excuse to flip out at extended socialinteractions, mister raised-by-robots. I actually had real live neighbors. Ishould be over this by now."

Dirk shrugs, which looks incredibly doofy when he's allcurled up like a pill bug. "As people keep telling me, brains aren'tparticularly logical organs. Besides, there's a pretty big difference betweensign language and a dozen plus people with actual vocal cords, some of whomhave a tragically shaky grasp of appropriate volume control."

"Ha. Yeah. Still."

"Still," Dirk agrees.

Roxy spreads her arms wide, staring up at the moons and theas-yet-unnamed constellations of their new universe, galaxy, solar system.Their new sun's a little brighter than Sol used to be -- a little smaller inthe sky, a little more pure-white than yellow-white -- and more like Alternia'ssun in its position vis-à-vis galactic center, which makes for some amazinglydense and brilliant starscapes. And she's saying this as a person who grew upwith no artificial light to blank out old Earth's night skies.

"Humans made the trolls' signs into constellationswithout any outside influence, just the shape of the universe orsomething," she muses. "I wonder if it's cheating to design ourconstellations ourselves."

Dirk shrugs again, a faint movement of shadow against darkershadow in the corner of her vision. "All our sessions were fucked from thestart; we had to cheat just to get out alive. What's a little more cheatingcompared to that? Ethical qualms aside, I'm pretty sure this planet isn't goingto be the focus of any future Sburb sessions. That dubious honor goes to the billionsof native planets kicking around this universe. If anyone's getting gentlymanipulated into using three-eyed cats and purple horrorterrors as part oftheir star myths, it's all those statistically inevitable aliens out there inthe wild black yonder."

"I bet their myths kick ass," Roxy says.

"I believe that's more or less implicit in thedefinition of the word. I'm not sure what they'll make of a hat or an LPrecord, though," Dirk says.

This time it's Roxy's turn to shrug. "Old-schoolD&D monsters, maybe? Or no, ten gets you one they'll go with crows andseagulls instead." She pauses, reconsiders. "Then again, Terezi'ssymbol is basically a giant lab tool with a shit-ton of cultural baggage, andKarkat's is kind of like, handcuffs, right? Maybe hats wind up as a symbol ofintellect and general badassery -- oh! or artificial life, like Frosty theSnowman's magic hat, 'cause of your robots and puppets thing -- and recordssymbolize creativity and art and stuff."

"Hats as a symbol of hubris and overreach, morelikely," Dirk mutters.

Roxy wriggles sideways until she's just close enough toflick the fingertips of her left hand against the side of his shoe. "Knockit off, dumbass. Nobody gets to badmouth my best friend -- not even my bestfriend."

Dirk unburies his face and meets Roxy's eyes straight on,one eyebrow raised. "I was under the impression that that title belongedto either Jane or Calliope. When did I inherit the position, and why was I notpreviously informed of this change in status? Are you sure you're followingfriend protocol correctly?"

Roxy flicks his shoe again. "Friendship is a bigcategory! You're all, like, different instantiations of the concept of 'bestfriend' -- Callie's my squee and kissing partner, Janey's my partner in crime,Rosie's my sister, Jake's my goofing off friend, Dave's my surrealism feedbackdude, John's my maybe-kinda-sorta other kissing partner, and so on and soforth. You, Dirk Strider, are theperson who knows me best in two and a half entire fucking universes. Okay?You're the one who knows what it's like. If I ever run off to be a hermit on amountaintop, I want you to come be a hermit on the mountain next door. We cansend heliograph messages back and forth, or learn how to yodel and shit, andonce a month we'll get together and have a wild and crazy hermit party, justthe two of us. That's the kind of best friend you are for me."

Dirk is silent for a long moment. Then he unwraps his righthand from his legs and lets it drop downward until his fingertips are justbrushing the soft, ticklish (completely un-carapacian) skin of Roxy's leftwrist, right over the veins carrying blood back to her heart.

"All that, back at you," he says.

Roxy blinks back a sudden rush of tears, and laces theirfingers together. Dirk lets her.

"Jade has some electric grid plans for you to lookover," she says after a minute. "You can do that anywhere,right?"

"Yeah," Dirk says.

"Then come seagull hunting with me tomorrow. Just the twoof us, out on the water. Like old times. I have a harpoon gun I've been wantingto try out, and we can tell anyone who complains that we're taking soundingsand stuff for potential tidal generators. Hell, we can even actually do that.But I miss you. I keep getting tangled up in everyone else and losing sight ofus."

Dirk squeezes her fingers. From him, it's as good as a hug.

"Yeah," he says. "It's a plan."

Roxy looks up at the night sky rather than try to put heremotions into words. There's a patch that looks a bit like a cat with wings, ifshe squints and takes some heavy artistic license. She holds up her phone inher right hand and adjusts the camera settings until she can snap a usefulpicture. She'll photoshop the constellation in later tonight and show it toDirk tomorrow: their friendship, immortalized in stars.

"Cool," she says.

They watch the pink moon overtake the white one in silence,fingers still entwined, the same air pumping in and out of their lungs.

---------------------------------------------

End of Fic

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It's still a little disjointed, I think, but whatever. Iwin. \o/

#liz writes stuff #homestuck #roxy lalonde #dirk strider #mini ficlet prompt meme #cotton candy bingo #asks and answers #in conversation with the internet #madamehardy #generalized content warning

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