#quacky my quacky… | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

anonymous-dentist · 2 years

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Egg.

Karl stumbles out of his library just after noon with a crick in his neck and stiff bones. He yawns and stretches his arms above his head, wincing at the way his spine creaks in protest. He isn’t old or anything, so what gives? Rude.

Lowering his arms, Karl shimmies in place a little to try and energize himself for the agonizingly-long walk down the road to his house. He can see it in the distance. His bedroom light is still on; he guesses that he forgot to turn it off the day before when he left for the library. George’s light, as usual, is off.

With a tired sigh, Karl begins the trek. Maybe he should just move his bed into the library. It’s not like he needs to live with George (is it really living with someone when the other person is just asleep all the time), and he spends more time in the library than in his own house, anyway. It’d probably be a good investment. He can get Foolish to help him move, or maybe Sapnap, though Sapnap would probably just try and get him to move in with him, and Karl would... rather not do that. He’d love to, but then he would have to explain why he suddenly disappeared in the middle of breakfast, and he still doesn’t know if he’s allowed to tell people about the whole time travel thing. It’s probably illegal ‘n stuff. Probably.

It’s a nice day out, at least. Karl left for the library at eleven a.m. the day before with the intention of trying to organize the mess in the basement, and he’s just now leaving. It smells of rain and campfires, lovely. The cherry blossom trees are still blooming, and the flowers’ gentle scent carries itself along the breeze gently. A petal flies into Karl’s eye; he sputters and wipes it away with a slight grimace.

When he pulls his hand away from his eye, there is a single red weed poking up in the direct center of the sidewalk that wasn’t there a moment ago.

Something tickles at the back of Karl’s mind, but he’s too tired to tell what it is. A phantom pain in his gut, but that’s probably just because he hasn’t eaten in over 24 hours.

Cautiously, Karl approaches the weed. It matches the Kinoko Kingdom color scheme, at least. Maybe it’s some kind of funky new plant or something. That’d be fun.

He crouches just in front of the weed and tilts his head at it. Again, there’s something about this weed that’s just...

PFFT!

Karl yelps and tumbles backwards in an awkward almost-somersault as the weed coughs up a load of stuff into the air. A thin red fog falls over the pavement around it.

Instinctively, Karl covers his hand with the sleeve of his hoodie, and then covers his nose and mouth with that. This is... it’s...

The spores (spores?) land on the ground. In an instant and right in front of Karl’s eyes, two- three more weeds push through the paving stones and sprout.

Karl’s eyes widen. Fucking- he knew that he should have gone to the Inbetween last time, fuck! He knew he would forget something!

He thought the Egg was dead or in prison or dead and in prison, but, no, it’s back, and this time it’s got weed. Weeds. It has weeds. Oh, god, it has weeds. Somehow, this is a groundbreaking (pun intended) revelation. It’s an egg, but it has weeds. It had roots last time, but now it’s grown. What’s next, flowers? Mushrooms?

...

Karl scrambles to his feet and runs to his house. Freaking mushrooms. Spores. Whatever!

He pulls on the handle with one hand, the other still covering his mouth, but the door doesn’t budge. Okay. It’s a push door, fucking duh.

He pushes on the handle with one hand. The door still doesn’t budge. Shit.

There’s a red weed under one of the front windows. Karl skips past that window to peek into the next one over. The windows don’t open in this house because of George’s funky little sleepwalking habit, but Karl should still be able to see what’s keeping the door shut.

He presses his face against the window and peers inside. He can just barely make out the other side of the front door. There’s a faint golden glow around the doorframe, he thinks, and a single green vine reached around the handle keeping the door shut. He follows the line of the vine up the stairs and out of sight. Presumably, it leads to George’s bedroom. This is probably fine. He keeps talking about the strong sugar daddy god boyfriend-wannabe guy that keeps appearing in his dreams (what was its name again?), so this is probably fine. Kinda sweet, honestly. It makes Karl want his strong “boyfriend-wannabe” guy, his literal beefcake of a fiancé.

Sapnap wasn’t ever as invested in the whole Egg thing as he probably should have been, but he had other things on his plate. Karl was more than happy to save... to save...

Karl frowns, eyes unfocusing slightly as he tries to remember. There are blank spots in his memory, he knows this, but he obviously can’t remember what those blank spots are. Apparently one is Egg-related. Huh. Go figure.

But Sapnap is kinda the head of Kinoko security, humble brag. He’s strong as hell. If anyone can get the Egg out of their peaceful little country, Sapnap can.

And so Karl turns around, set on finding Sapnap.

“Karl! Hey!”

Karl blinks as Sapnap rounds a corner ahead, looking halfway out of breath already. Huh. What a coincidence. Karl was just thinking about him, and here he is! Lovely!

(Or...?)

Karl stays put as Sapnap comes running, tail lashing behind him excitedly. His nerves are on edge. There’s something about this that’s a bit off, but he can’t tell what. He can’t actually remember what the Egg does, is the thing, he can’t remember. He knows it’s bad. He knows it’s Bad. He knows it’s really, really bad.

He also knows that it spreads through little spores, so he calls out, “Put something around your mouth!”

It comes out a little muffled from his sleeve, but Sapnap must get the message because his eyes widen slightly, looking more than a little confused, and he nods, untying his probably-sweaty bandana from around his wrist (that’s a little weird...) and pressing it over his mouth and nose. (He’s never been the most hygienic person, but Karl loves him, anyway.)

When Sapnap gets to him, Karl is suddenly hit with a sudden wave of urgh energy that almost knocks him off of his feet. The vibes are off. But Sapnap seems normal. All the Egg-y people are, like, funky. Bad had a swapped color palette. So did Skeppy. Ant looked like he had pink eye. Sapnap doesn’t look weird, but there’s...

Sapnap looks around the area carefully, probably looking for danger, the little military genius. Maybe Karl is giving him too much credit because Sapnap is almost famous for being dense at the best of times, but he likes to think that his fiancé is as smart as he is strong and good-looking.

“What’s up?” Sapnap asks, much too casual to actually be casual. He’s just playing at casual, he has to be.

Karl looks him over. He looks normal. The Egg hasn’t spread that far, not yet, just three or four little weeds in Kinoko.

He looks at the sidewalk and balks. Where there were less than a handful are suddenly over a dozen little weeds sprouting up out of the newly-formed cracks in the pavement.

“I think we should get inside,” Karl weakly says. It probably won’t help, but he knows that he has some actual masks in his room from a couple weeks ago when Sapnap was sick with the Demon Flu. It was the first time that Sapnap had gotten it, actually, because of his whole barely-a-demon thing, so he and Karl had to be extra careful not to let it get too bad.

Sapnap narrows his eyes in confusion, but he nods, anyway, always eager to do what he’s told. He’s cute like that: Karl’s little simp.

“We should get George,” Sapnap says.

Patting Karl on the arm comfortingly, his hand lingering for just a second too long to be anything but him yearning (nothing unusual there...), he brushes past Karl to go and try the front door.

“George is fine,” Karl says. He stays close to Sapnap. While Sapnap might not be able to fistfight a weed or a cloud of spores, he’s still comforting. “His guy’s looking out for him.”

Sapnap tries the door, anyway. When it doesn’t open, he growls under his breath and kicks it frustratedly. Karl winces.

“Hey, calm down,” he says, putting a gentle hand on Sapnap’s shoulder. Sapnap melts into his touch (nothing unusual there, either...) “George is safe in there, promise. He’s got his sugar daddy protecting him.”

“Yeah, well, fuck George’s guy,” Sapnap grumbles. He rattles the door handle. “What does he have that I don’t? I’m better than any stupid old god.”

“Sure you are,” Karl placates. Sapnap’s skin is abnormally warm, but he’s also kind of a demon, sort of. He sneezes fire sometimes and he has the cutest little stubby little horns now, but-

Karl blinks. Sapnap does’t have horns. Sapnap complains about not having horns all the time. Bad has them, so why doesn’t he, he always whines. And yet here they are, two cute little horns sticking out of his head right around the height he wears his bandana at. That explains it being tied around his wrist, then.

But maybe Karl’s memory is just being weird again. It wouldn’t be the first time that this is happened.

“Cute,” he smiles, brushing it aside as one of those Memory Things.

Sapnap’s ears twitch (okay, now that’s weird) amusedly. He squints up at Karl, clearly smiling as well behind his bandana-mask.

“Yeah, you are,” Sapnap agrees.

Karl giggles despite all of the many, many warning bells going off in his head.

“Let’s come back to George,” Karl decides. He takes Sapnap’s free hand in his own and squeezes it. “We gotta see if Tina’s fine.”

“Tina’s fine,” Sapnap assures, sounding- smug? Smug. Definitely smug.- about it. He squeezes Karl’s hand back just a bit too strongly to be anything nearing a normal amount of affection. “We should get George. Who knows how long he’s been stuck in there?”

“Too long,” Karl says. “But I have a feeling that he’s safer in there than he is out here.”

He looks pointedly at the weeds, tensing as he notices the large patch of weeds popping up around his and Sapnap’s feet in a circle. It’s like he and Sapnap are in the eye of a hurricane, only the winds and the rain are shitty evil mind-control cult Egg weeds.

Sapnap’s grip on his hand only grows tighter at that last statement.

“No,” Sapnap stresses, “he isn’t. If he’s in there, I can’t... Karl, we have to get him out of there.”

His tail lashes angrily behind him and- yeah, no, this is definitely weird. Absolutely not Karl Is Tired weird, and almost definitely not Memory Things weird. This is, this is-

“Sapnap,” Karl nervously laughs, not able to help it because this is his fiance. “I’m kinda getting freaked out here. Are you... are you good?”

“No, I’m not!” Sapnap growls. Nails dig into Karl’s hand; Karl muffles a whimper, but Sapnap doesn’t seem to notice. “Because- you’re here. But he-” He drops the hand masking his face points at the house, at George’s darkened window. “-is in there! We’re all supposed to be together now!”

A pit opens up in Karl’s stomach.

“And Quackity-” This time, Sapnap turns both himself and Karl around and points furiously towards that disgusting desert city over the horizon. “-is all the way over there! How am I supposed to... ugh!”

He groans, clearly more than a little upset, and it’s only now that Karl can see the point to his teeth and the dried blood crusting his lips, presumably from him accidentally biting himself one too many times trying to get used to his sudden new features. (Because Karl knows that Sapnap’s teeth aren’t sharp because they make out way too much for him not to know.)

The weeds cough up more spores. Karl holds his breath.

Sapnap breathes the spores in eagerly, calming down by the second. His grip on Karl’s hand grows ever-tighter, and, for the first time in his life, Karl just wants him to let go.

#all my friends did eggnap but quacky #so i'm doing eggnap but karl #i don't know anything about the egg btw but i think it? offers to give people what they want?#and sap wants george. he wants all his loved ones back because he's so ALONE all of the time #he wants george. he wants his fiances. he wants tina. he wants- wants- well he wants dream but the egg really doesn't #(it thinks dream is rude)

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