Matrices [Act 1: Knight]
[a sprawling city in Texas. dusk.]
You are fucking sick of Texas.
It feels like you've been stuck in this same city for ages. Sure, you've been out of it- field trips to the capital, visiting friends out of state, and your classes at university- but you're back in the same mire that seemed to suck the youth right out of you. Everything is so bright and fast and hot that it seems to burn up without anyone knowing that there isn't enough fuel to keep the fire going.
You remember not knowing that stars even existed until you were nine or so, and you and Bro had been strifing on the roof at night. A sudden lift in the city smog that night had revealed the first few sparks of light from space to ever be seen by the younger Strider, and then Bro had nearly gutted you for the slip of shock. You had hungered for a look at them ever since.
You know a lot about the stars now- you're an astronomer now, but they aren't in such high demand in a fucking recession, and especially not one so adamant about the distant sound bouncing between stars and planets and not so much about the actual stars.
You have a lame ass job at a music company, filing papers and shit mostly, and you work as a dj on most weekends to pay the bills. You live in a shitty apartment, and you don't even own a car. Shirt sleeves rolled up, you're currently walking home from your shitty job to change and get ready for a show later that night.
It was sweltering, and the lights of headlights would have hit you in the eyes repeatedly if it weren't for you shades. The buildings around him reflected the light in a dizzying circle, and the glass stretched up for miles overhead, nearly blotting out the falling darkness in the sky.
You sigh, restless and angry at nothing and everything. You get home, finally, thank God, and are able to strip out of your work clothes and get a quick shower. Toothbrush in your mouth, you wake his computer up with a few sharp taps, blearily set on checking your email before the show.
The screen lit itself, then suddenly blacked. Irritated, you punched a few more keys.
The screen lit again, only this time the arrow moved on the screen of it's own volition. Spooked, your hands fly back off the keys, and you watch in stunned silence as your Pesterchum application opened itself, and a very familiar and chilling username popped up on the screen.
[ectoBiologist began pestering turntechGodhead at 20:32]
EB: dave!
EB: it's time
You spit your toothbrush onto the floor and hammer out a response, heart in your throat.
TG: holy shit
TG: john
TG: is that seriously you
TG: im not talking to a spectre or some shit, right
TG: oh wait, dont tell me
TG: youre here to usher me into the afterlife
TG: i got hit by a car on the way home
TG: and now theyre scraping my mangled corpse off the highway
TG: ill join you in hell in a sec, just gotta use the commode
TG: seriously though where the fuck have you been
TG: weve all been worried sick
EB: how long has it been? since we last talked, i mean?
TG: ...
TG: you last talked to jade six months ago
TG: been almost seven since you and me chatted like fucking high school girls
TG: are you okay, bro?
TG: do i need to come bust some fucking caps
TG: in order to bring you home?
EB: shit, that long?
EB: but, no! i don't need rescued.
EB: i'm perfectly fine, dave!
EB: it's you guys i'm worried about!
EB: it's time for you to wake up!
TG: what
EB: that's what i did, i woke up!
EB: it's real, dave.
EB: Skaia is real.
You sit back, idly wiping the slobber from your chin.
That was something that you haven't thought about in...years, now.
TG: no
TG: skaia was just that bullshit that jade dreamed about
TG: it was all in her head
EB: no, dave, that's not true!
EB: it's what they want you to believe, but you have to trust me that Skaia is real! and we're all in it right now!
TG: no
TG: that's shit
TG: this isn't fucking funny, john
TG: we've been
TG: i've been worried fucking sick
TG: sittin here like a stricken widow
TG: starin out the window and sighing over my handkerchief
TG: thinkin about how our eternal love was cut too short
TG: now you'll never get to take my fragile girlhood
TG: never got a chance to consummate that shit
EB: dave, you're so funny!
EB: i've really missed you too, though.
EB: but if you want, we can meet?
TG: what
TG: are you saying you've been here the whole fucking time
TG: you bitch
TG: where are you
TG: so i can fucking kneecap you
TG: asshole
EB: hehehe
EB: meet me tonight at the club?
TG: wait
TG: how did you know where i
EB: tonight! see ya!
[ectoBiologist ceased pestering turntechGodhead]
"...Fuck."
[a nightclub in urban Texas. early morning.]
You're coated in sweat, the beat a constant thump more faithful to you than your own heart. You've stopped hearing the songs a long time ago- you're letting the pulse and flow of the speakers guide you through the music, the dancers moving in a wave of group mentality, like the many little feelers of an anemone swaying in the current.
You've has been tense, scanning the crowds for the entire night, but so far you haven't seen hide or hair of the king of derp. You feels sick with the tension, the anxiety. You remember the fear and the dread when John's dad had declared him missing, and Jade had called you up in the middle of the night, crying of how John was gone and he was never going to come back.
So far, her prediction had been true, and while they hadn't given up hope exactly, you've stopped sitting up by the phone waiting for news about your best friend. You know the statistics on missing persons, especially twenty-somethings like John.
Tearing your mind from that, you put on a pre-mixed playlist and step out from behind the booth, cutting through the crowd like a sickle. You make it through the crowd, weaving back through the labyrinth of corridors to the bathroom-
And you stop dead as you catch sight of John Egbert, leaning against the wall next to the men's room door.
He looked just the same as you remembered him from the few times you've met in person, at first glance, but when he turned and saw you and smiled, his eyes seemed electric blue, impossible and startlingly blue. His hair was longer, and he wore a blue t-shirt, black skin-tight jeans, and a bright blue scarf woven around his neck.
"Dave," he murmured, around buck teeth, and loped forward to envelope you in a crushing hug. You hugged him back, a little stiffly, and then poured all the pain and the worry into effectively hugging your best friend to death. John wheezed, clearly bemused, and pulled himself out of your grip.
You draw a deep breath, nostrils flared, and prepares to lay down some sick rhymes about how much you want to gut John for being a bitch and not telling anyone he was even alive, but John just smiles that derp smile and you want desperately, so desperately you can barely breathe for it, to never, ever let him go again.
"Come here," John commands, soft and sickly bright, and he takes your hand and drags you into the bathroom.
For half a second you think this is some kind of precursor to sloppy fucking make-outs, and you're Not A Homosexual, but well. John is your best bro. Bros before hoes? Does that even apply in this situation?
Instead, there are five leather clad people waiting for the two of you, and something that looks like the most wicked dentist chair in existence.
You tense, nerves on high-alert, but John pulls you forward. Damn bastard has always been stronger than you.
"Dave, these people are here to help. They listen to me, so you can trust them. They won't hurt you." You scoff, but watch them carefully. They watch you back with the same hard-eyed looks of war veterans, though one girl bares sharp teeth in a wicked sneer, another smiles coyly in a way that reminds you of Rose, a boy scowls, a blind girl grins, and another boy leers in a very baked fashion.
John squeezes your hand, biting his lip, and you instinctively wind your fingers through his.
"Dave, you have to trust me. Skaia is real, I swear. But I can't explain what it is," he says sharply, sensing your need to interrupt, "I can only show you. If you choose to let me show you, you will leave your life as you know it behind. If you choose not to, you will never see me again."
You watch his Adam's apple bob. He's nervous, watching you through those thick square glasses. You glance over the leather-clads again, but they just watch in silence. You shift from foot to foot, just watching and breathing for a long minute.
"What about Rose and Jade? I can't leave them behind with all this worry. They'll die, if I disappear too." John's eyes dart down- guilt and regret, but he looks back up at you with a beaming smile.
"That's the great part- they'll wake up soon too! But it has to be you, first. I was woken up to wake you, and you have to wake Rose, and she'll wake Jade! We'll all be together again." His lip wobbles, and he reaches out to touch your face, you think, but aborts that to clasp your shoulder.
"Please, Dave. This- this is what we were born for."
You don't believe that Skaia is real. But you know that you cannot walk out and leave him here, never to see him again.
"Okay," you breathe, and he squeezes your hand hard, practically glowing with excitement, and suddenly the leather-clads swarm over you, ushering you into the chair of motherfucking doom.
You start to panic when they strap your arms down in the most efficient manner possible, and the blind girl giggles from over you head, muttering something to the wicked one. They both laugh as the grumpy ass boy grabs some sort of horribly point instrument with a tube in the middle, and the stoned one hauls your shirt up to your armpits.
"Uh, not that I'm not into the kinky shit, but do I at least get a safe word?" You ask, trying to sound cool, but oh fuck, this is like something out of Hostel. The grumpy one mumbles something, and the blind girl leans over your face. Her yellow hair tickles your face, her red lenses thick and angular over her blank goldfish eyes.
"Don't worry, coolkid, this'll only hurt like a bitch," she says, her voice lilting and girlish, but holding a murderous edge as sharp as a saw blade. She snickers, and you haven't been paying attention to what grumpass is doing but suddenly you buckle with pain that you were trained to keep silent, and hands clamp down on you to hold you a straight as a plank with inhuman strength.
It feels like someone's wrenching a kidney stone out through your stomach, and the kidney stone is trying it's damn hardest to tear all your guts up on it's way out. Your vision pulses red, muscles clenching involuntarily, and you feel your brain trying to shut down, trying to go catatonic rather than let out a noise or bear with the pain.
And suddenly there's a sick, squelching pop, along with the sound of metal screeching against glass, and then the toilet flushes. You pant helplessly, and you feel the sharp nick of a needle at the inside of your elbow.
"What. The fuck," you manage to wheeze, and the girl that reminds you of Rose is patching up a rather bloody gash where your belly button used to be. You realize rather belatedly that your sunglasses were knocked of in the process.
"Their Tracer Was Inside Of You. It Would Have Killed You Rather Than Let You Leave Skaia," she explains gently. She finishes her bandage with the utmost care, giving you a sympathetic smile, and your arms are unbound. You feel too weak to move out of the chair, but that doesn't seem to matter as John comes around, standing above your head and craning his head down to look at you. His expression is soft and happy, but you can see your own tension and fear mirrored in his eyes.
He reaches out and gently places his fingers on your neck, tracing over your throat and coaxing your head back a little further. You swallow against the pad of his thumb, the heel of his hands at your jaw. He leans down carefully, and you tremble very slightly at the thought that he is going to kiss you. His lips brush yours very slightly as he whispers,
"Awaken to a new world, Dave," and then it feels like he robs all the breath from your lungs as you pass out.
[a new world. 16:37]
When you open your eyes, it feels as if you're being blinded. Literally. Someone is trying to blind you with light. You close your eyes and turn your face away, but even then it's too bright, and every little centimeter of you aches.
Slowly, you try to raise your hand to cover your eyes, but you actually can't do it. You feel weaker than a newborn baby, and you become slowly aware that you're laying on a cold metal table, and there's warm air on your skin.
"He's awake," you hear a lilting voice say softly, and the screech of chair legs against the floor makes you cringe.
"Dave, it's okay, just relax." You try, but the air and John's voice feel like electricity on your skin.
"What happened? Where am I?" you croak, and your voice doesn't sound, doesn't feel like your own.
"You woke up, Dave. We're on board the Battlefield. It's safe here." He strokes a hand over your bare shoulder, pressing lightly into the dip of your clavicle. His hand is so warm compared to the cold of the table that you try to open your eyes, and instead end up staring into the sun, or whatever the fuck it is that's blinding you.
"Can someone shut that fucking light off?" The blind girl makes a noise and the light goes out. You manage to blink blearily up at Egbert. It hurts just to have your eyes open.
"Why do I hurt so much?" Even as your eyes are adjusting, you can make out his smile amongst the blur of colors.
"You've never used this body, Dave. It's brand new. We're attempting to heal your muscles, but the atrophy is pretty severe. It'll take a while."
It's still too bright and you're too dazed to really understand what he's saying, but your eyes come into focus, finally.
What you see makes no fucking sense.
John is ragged and worn, his clothes like stained cheesecloth hanging off of his skinny frame. He looks younger, impossibly younger, like fourteen or something, and is pale and dirty and his eyes are hard, not the clear blue you've always known. His glasses are held together with tape.
You let out a noise and close your eyes. It feels like ages before you open them again.
You witness scenes as you regain your strength. The blind girl, black hair now and gray-ish skin in front of the computer monitor she's working at. She has her back to you, and there's something yellow-red sticking out of her hair. The screen she works at is smeared, cracked, and archaic. Her clothes don't disguise the insect-sharpness of her bones through her skin.
Machinery clings and clangs around you at all hours. There's exposed pipes and wires everywhere, steam making the air humid and the smell of grease clinging to all surfaces. Slowly, the noises just become part of the scenery.
Eventually, you reach a point where you wake up and you don't feel like a sack of meat anymore, you actually feel alive. This prompts you to sit up.
Holy fuck, you're like beyond pale and skinny and really really naked. You glance around and spot a blanket. You're alone, and draw the blanket around your naked body.
After a moment, you feel like standing. You scoot across the cold table and hop down. Your knees nearly go out, and shit, why are you so short? There's a mirror hanging on the open door of a metal locker nearby, and you shuffle over and open the door to see your reflection.
For a second, you think someone's playing an elaborate hoax on you, because there is no way that can be your reflection.
The first thing that's wrong is that you're nearly bald. Almost as bad as that time that you'd been ironically growing your hair out and it'd caught on fire while you were messing with the microwave. Bro had been forced to give you a severe buzz cut, and yeah that's totally off topic.
Your eyes...your eyes were hazel before, right? For some reason, it doesn't feel all that strange to see red irises gazing back at you. And the fact that it doesn't feel weird just makes you feel twice as weird.
Your entire face is subtly changed- younger, for one, but your features are slightly altered. Your nose isn't as sharp, and your ears are slightly bigger, maybe?
You turn your head, and catch sight of something dark on the back of your head. Instinctively you react out and touch it, but before you can process the feeling of cold metal a zap of static electricity seems to jump from your fingers to the inside of your very brain, and straight through your nervous system.
After recovering, you notice the same dark spot on your inner elbow.
It's a metal socket, and a long needle and attached tube seems to run into your arm. You're about to pull it out when a voice behind you says,
"I wouldn't do that, fuckass. The endorphin cocktail that tube is serving you up is the only thing keeping you on your bipedal stalks."
You turn, schooling your face.
And the image that meets your eyes is nearly enough to crack your smooth veneer.
It's one of the black leather douchebags. The grumpy one, from the look on his face and amount of cursing. But his skin...it's grey and unnaturally smooth, even a little shiny. Black hair still, but he has candy-corn little nub horns and shark teeth inside of his little sneer. He's wearing the same grubby clothes as John and blind girl...oh, fuck, now that you think about, she looked like this too.
Shark teeth stretch into a smug grin.
"Contain your debased shock, human Dave. As much fun as being saddled with your near-dead corpse was, we need your ass up and doing shit." You give a carefully controlled smirk in response, only it doesn't feel as controlled as it used to be. Also it's kind of bright, and you're trying not to squint.
"And who the fuck do you think you are to start ordering me around like you own said pasty ass?" Your voice is hoarse and lacking it's usual drawl. You feel oddly more naked than you actually are without your familiar accent. Mr. Monster scowls, just as tight and careful as your own expressions.
"The Captain of this ship, which you currently live on, and the one who pulled your pathetic floating fleshbag out of the waste soup. Also I helped create your entire universe. So I think I have plenty of authority over you." He bares his teeth in something like a smile, or maybe a snarl. His cheekbones could cut glass.
[a memory floats up. a pod. green slime. metal tubes disconnect to your limbs as the slime drains. acres of pods stretch out in both directions, each holding a pale, still body.
it dawns on you that this might be reality. that this is what you were supposed to wake up to.]
"Where's John?" you ask, and your voice cracks traitorously. Captain Authority Dickwad raises an eyebrow, his expression twisting into cruel delight.
"Egbert? Why, are you two moirails or something? I know he's flushed for you, but jegus cris, I didn't think it was mutual."
You stare blankly. That was total fucking nonsense. His expression draws in as he reads the incomprehension on your face, and he rolls his eyes.
"Fine. Egbert should be running simulations. First we should cover your disgusting carapace though. No one wants to see that shit." You make yap-yap motions at him, and he turns and starts walking away. You follow the tube in your arm to a little pouch on hanging from a coat hanger, which is full of clear liquid. You hold the thing up in the air like a retard as you follow him.
There's rooms everywhere, submarine doors, and they branch off of the twisting metal catwalk you follow him along. There are other grey people, some of whom you recognize- blind girl introduces herself as Terezi and grins an unnatural grin at you- and others you don't. Captain Hitherto Unnamed curses as a guy with huge bronco horns walks past on robot legs, and he stutters, "Uh, sorry, Karkat. I didn't mean to, uh, be in the way."
You both duck under his horns, and Karkat McBitchface leads you into a room, where he measures you like a cranky little Chinese lady. He hands you clothes. They're thin and badly made, but surprisingly warm when you pull them on. You're gawky and tall (not as tall as you were), and you send up a silent prayer that you're not going through puberty for a second frigging time. Once was more than enough.
You're pulling on woolly, slightly huge socks and brown leather boots when the door cracks open, and John sticks his head inside.
"Dave! You're awake!" Instantly John glomps you, and you hug him back a little. Just a little.
He's holding a flashlight, and shines the damn thing all around him as he grins.
"It's so dark on this ship, right? I could barely stand it at first, but then I found this flashlight, and it helps a little!"
"Are you kidding, Egbert, that thing is fucking blinding. Turn that shit off, it's fine in here." John makes a confused face, and suddenly Karkat grabs your chin and forces you to look up at him. He stares critically at your face for a long moment.
"His eyes are extremely photosensitive, John. His pupils aren't even dilated in this light. Gimme your flashthing." He takes John's flashlight and puts it over your face for a half-second. You hiss and try to pull back -that's fucking bright, and rude- and Karkat laughs.
"At least one of you humans won't be completely useless in the dark. Thank gog." You swat at him as hard as you can and wrench your chin free. He grins like a feral Cheshire Cat at you.
"John, can I get some kind of explanation as to what the ever living fuck is going on here? Because I gotta tell you bro, I'm massively confused." John and Karkat share a look, and John takes your hand, your hanger full of drugs, and helps you up.
"C'mon. I'll explain everything," he says softly, and draws you down the hall with him.
The catwalk opens into a round hub of a room. There's a bank of complicated computers, and a ring of the same lethal looking dentist chairs in the middle of the room, hooked up to all kinds of weird stuff.
He takes you to a chair, and asks you to sit.
"The last time I was in one of those you ripped something out of me. I'd rather not do that again." He smiles reassuringly and gently corrals you into the chair. You lay back stiffly, and he stands over you, hand still clasped around yours. He takes something and puts it to the back of your head, and before you can register that it's sharp and long and cold he touches that metal socket at the base of your skull with it.
"No, w-" You start to pull away, but he shoves you down and then shoves it in.
It feels like he's pierced your cerebellum with it, you're going to die any second from the pain of it-
-you blink. There's a very vague sort of ache in your neck, but no pain. John stands across from you, looking clean and older and like the John you knew before you woke up. You're tall again, you notice, and you wear normal clothes and your shades are back, and your hair.
"What the fuck, John." He shrugs, smiling sheepishly.
"Sorry. It's necessary to show you certain things, and that means plugging in." You scowl.
"I thought the point was to get out of Skaia?" He shrugs again.
"You're getting ahead. Let me explain from the beginning."
[Battleship. 04:14. John's cabin]
John explained from the beginning.
At first, you refused to believe him. A video game hijacking reality? Really, Egbert, you weren't born yesterday. Come the fuck on.
Then you start to panic. Everyone you know is a living battery. Rose, Jade, Christ, your brother is in one of those pods right now, and John says it's not safe to pull him out, not safe until the you can come into your powers.
He started to explain the time shit, but then Aradia stepped in, said about three sentences, and everything just slid into place.
Now you have a broken nose and are swaddled in four blankets, sweating to death. John fusses over you like he always does.
"Remember that time we met up at your house, and the four of us fell asleep in a pile on your bed?" you ask hoarsely. You think he was saying something, but you weren't paying attention, and he stops. You haven't spoken since they pulled you out of the simulation.
"Yeah, Dave, I remember," he says, soft and fragile.
"I just wish it could be like that again," you say, and it's dark and quiet and there's a blanket covering most of your face so it's okay to be weak, just for this moment. Besides, it's John. John knows everything about you, even when you wish he didn't.
John crawls up onto his bed with you, unwrapping half of your blankets and then tucking the two of you together in a blanket caccoon. You close your eyes and pretend the wall pressed up against your back is Jade, the bunny digging into your hip is Rose's knee, and you fall asleep.
You are fucking sick of Texas.
It feels like you've been stuck in this same city for ages. Sure, you've been out of it- field trips to the capital, visiting friends out of state, and your classes at university- but you're back in the same mire that seemed to suck the youth right out of you. Everything is so bright and fast and hot that it seems to burn up without anyone knowing that there isn't enough fuel to keep the fire going.
You remember not knowing that stars even existed until you were nine or so, and you and Bro had been strifing on the roof at night. A sudden lift in the city smog that night had revealed the first few sparks of light from space to ever be seen by the younger Strider, and then Bro had nearly gutted you for the slip of shock. You had hungered for a look at them ever since.
You know a lot about the stars now- you're an astronomer now, but they aren't in such high demand in a fucking recession, and especially not one so adamant about the distant sound bouncing between stars and planets and not so much about the actual stars.
You have a lame ass job at a music company, filing papers and shit mostly, and you work as a dj on most weekends to pay the bills. You live in a shitty apartment, and you don't even own a car. Shirt sleeves rolled up, you're currently walking home from your shitty job to change and get ready for a show later that night.
It was sweltering, and the lights of headlights would have hit you in the eyes repeatedly if it weren't for you shades. The buildings around him reflected the light in a dizzying circle, and the glass stretched up for miles overhead, nearly blotting out the falling darkness in the sky.
You sigh, restless and angry at nothing and everything. You get home, finally, thank God, and are able to strip out of your work clothes and get a quick shower. Toothbrush in your mouth, you wake his computer up with a few sharp taps, blearily set on checking your email before the show.
The screen lit itself, then suddenly blacked. Irritated, you punched a few more keys.
The screen lit again, only this time the arrow moved on the screen of it's own volition. Spooked, your hands fly back off the keys, and you watch in stunned silence as your Pesterchum application opened itself, and a very familiar and chilling username popped up on the screen.
[ectoBiologist began pestering turntechGodhead at 20:32]
EB: dave!
EB: it's time
You spit your toothbrush onto the floor and hammer out a response, heart in your throat.
TG: holy shit
TG: john
TG: is that seriously you
TG: im not talking to a spectre or some shit, right
TG: oh wait, dont tell me
TG: youre here to usher me into the afterlife
TG: i got hit by a car on the way home
TG: and now theyre scraping my mangled corpse off the highway
TG: ill join you in hell in a sec, just gotta use the commode
TG: seriously though where the fuck have you been
TG: weve all been worried sick
EB: how long has it been? since we last talked, i mean?
TG: ...
TG: you last talked to jade six months ago
TG: been almost seven since you and me chatted like fucking high school girls
TG: are you okay, bro?
TG: do i need to come bust some fucking caps
TG: in order to bring you home?
EB: shit, that long?
EB: but, no! i don't need rescued.
EB: i'm perfectly fine, dave!
EB: it's you guys i'm worried about!
EB: it's time for you to wake up!
TG: what
EB: that's what i did, i woke up!
EB: it's real, dave.
EB: Skaia is real.
You sit back, idly wiping the slobber from your chin.
That was something that you haven't thought about in...years, now.
TG: no
TG: skaia was just that bullshit that jade dreamed about
TG: it was all in her head
EB: no, dave, that's not true!
EB: it's what they want you to believe, but you have to trust me that Skaia is real! and we're all in it right now!
TG: no
TG: that's shit
TG: this isn't fucking funny, john
TG: we've been
TG: i've been worried fucking sick
TG: sittin here like a stricken widow
TG: starin out the window and sighing over my handkerchief
TG: thinkin about how our eternal love was cut too short
TG: now you'll never get to take my fragile girlhood
TG: never got a chance to consummate that shit
EB: dave, you're so funny!
EB: i've really missed you too, though.
EB: but if you want, we can meet?
TG: what
TG: are you saying you've been here the whole fucking time
TG: you bitch
TG: where are you
TG: so i can fucking kneecap you
TG: asshole
EB: hehehe
EB: meet me tonight at the club?
TG: wait
TG: how did you know where i
EB: tonight! see ya!
[ectoBiologist ceased pestering turntechGodhead]
"...Fuck."
[a nightclub in urban Texas. early morning.]
You're coated in sweat, the beat a constant thump more faithful to you than your own heart. You've stopped hearing the songs a long time ago- you're letting the pulse and flow of the speakers guide you through the music, the dancers moving in a wave of group mentality, like the many little feelers of an anemone swaying in the current.
You've has been tense, scanning the crowds for the entire night, but so far you haven't seen hide or hair of the king of derp. You feels sick with the tension, the anxiety. You remember the fear and the dread when John's dad had declared him missing, and Jade had called you up in the middle of the night, crying of how John was gone and he was never going to come back.
So far, her prediction had been true, and while they hadn't given up hope exactly, you've stopped sitting up by the phone waiting for news about your best friend. You know the statistics on missing persons, especially twenty-somethings like John.
Tearing your mind from that, you put on a pre-mixed playlist and step out from behind the booth, cutting through the crowd like a sickle. You make it through the crowd, weaving back through the labyrinth of corridors to the bathroom-
And you stop dead as you catch sight of John Egbert, leaning against the wall next to the men's room door.
He looked just the same as you remembered him from the few times you've met in person, at first glance, but when he turned and saw you and smiled, his eyes seemed electric blue, impossible and startlingly blue. His hair was longer, and he wore a blue t-shirt, black skin-tight jeans, and a bright blue scarf woven around his neck.
"Dave," he murmured, around buck teeth, and loped forward to envelope you in a crushing hug. You hugged him back, a little stiffly, and then poured all the pain and the worry into effectively hugging your best friend to death. John wheezed, clearly bemused, and pulled himself out of your grip.
You draw a deep breath, nostrils flared, and prepares to lay down some sick rhymes about how much you want to gut John for being a bitch and not telling anyone he was even alive, but John just smiles that derp smile and you want desperately, so desperately you can barely breathe for it, to never, ever let him go again.
"Come here," John commands, soft and sickly bright, and he takes your hand and drags you into the bathroom.
For half a second you think this is some kind of precursor to sloppy fucking make-outs, and you're Not A Homosexual, but well. John is your best bro. Bros before hoes? Does that even apply in this situation?
Instead, there are five leather clad people waiting for the two of you, and something that looks like the most wicked dentist chair in existence.
You tense, nerves on high-alert, but John pulls you forward. Damn bastard has always been stronger than you.
"Dave, these people are here to help. They listen to me, so you can trust them. They won't hurt you." You scoff, but watch them carefully. They watch you back with the same hard-eyed looks of war veterans, though one girl bares sharp teeth in a wicked sneer, another smiles coyly in a way that reminds you of Rose, a boy scowls, a blind girl grins, and another boy leers in a very baked fashion.
John squeezes your hand, biting his lip, and you instinctively wind your fingers through his.
"Dave, you have to trust me. Skaia is real, I swear. But I can't explain what it is," he says sharply, sensing your need to interrupt, "I can only show you. If you choose to let me show you, you will leave your life as you know it behind. If you choose not to, you will never see me again."
You watch his Adam's apple bob. He's nervous, watching you through those thick square glasses. You glance over the leather-clads again, but they just watch in silence. You shift from foot to foot, just watching and breathing for a long minute.
"What about Rose and Jade? I can't leave them behind with all this worry. They'll die, if I disappear too." John's eyes dart down- guilt and regret, but he looks back up at you with a beaming smile.
"That's the great part- they'll wake up soon too! But it has to be you, first. I was woken up to wake you, and you have to wake Rose, and she'll wake Jade! We'll all be together again." His lip wobbles, and he reaches out to touch your face, you think, but aborts that to clasp your shoulder.
"Please, Dave. This- this is what we were born for."
You don't believe that Skaia is real. But you know that you cannot walk out and leave him here, never to see him again.
"Okay," you breathe, and he squeezes your hand hard, practically glowing with excitement, and suddenly the leather-clads swarm over you, ushering you into the chair of motherfucking doom.
You start to panic when they strap your arms down in the most efficient manner possible, and the blind girl giggles from over you head, muttering something to the wicked one. They both laugh as the grumpy ass boy grabs some sort of horribly point instrument with a tube in the middle, and the stoned one hauls your shirt up to your armpits.
"Uh, not that I'm not into the kinky shit, but do I at least get a safe word?" You ask, trying to sound cool, but oh fuck, this is like something out of Hostel. The grumpy one mumbles something, and the blind girl leans over your face. Her yellow hair tickles your face, her red lenses thick and angular over her blank goldfish eyes.
"Don't worry, coolkid, this'll only hurt like a bitch," she says, her voice lilting and girlish, but holding a murderous edge as sharp as a saw blade. She snickers, and you haven't been paying attention to what grumpass is doing but suddenly you buckle with pain that you were trained to keep silent, and hands clamp down on you to hold you a straight as a plank with inhuman strength.
It feels like someone's wrenching a kidney stone out through your stomach, and the kidney stone is trying it's damn hardest to tear all your guts up on it's way out. Your vision pulses red, muscles clenching involuntarily, and you feel your brain trying to shut down, trying to go catatonic rather than let out a noise or bear with the pain.
And suddenly there's a sick, squelching pop, along with the sound of metal screeching against glass, and then the toilet flushes. You pant helplessly, and you feel the sharp nick of a needle at the inside of your elbow.
"What. The fuck," you manage to wheeze, and the girl that reminds you of Rose is patching up a rather bloody gash where your belly button used to be. You realize rather belatedly that your sunglasses were knocked of in the process.
"Their Tracer Was Inside Of You. It Would Have Killed You Rather Than Let You Leave Skaia," she explains gently. She finishes her bandage with the utmost care, giving you a sympathetic smile, and your arms are unbound. You feel too weak to move out of the chair, but that doesn't seem to matter as John comes around, standing above your head and craning his head down to look at you. His expression is soft and happy, but you can see your own tension and fear mirrored in his eyes.
He reaches out and gently places his fingers on your neck, tracing over your throat and coaxing your head back a little further. You swallow against the pad of his thumb, the heel of his hands at your jaw. He leans down carefully, and you tremble very slightly at the thought that he is going to kiss you. His lips brush yours very slightly as he whispers,
"Awaken to a new world, Dave," and then it feels like he robs all the breath from your lungs as you pass out.
[a new world. 16:37]
When you open your eyes, it feels as if you're being blinded. Literally. Someone is trying to blind you with light. You close your eyes and turn your face away, but even then it's too bright, and every little centimeter of you aches.
Slowly, you try to raise your hand to cover your eyes, but you actually can't do it. You feel weaker than a newborn baby, and you become slowly aware that you're laying on a cold metal table, and there's warm air on your skin.
"He's awake," you hear a lilting voice say softly, and the screech of chair legs against the floor makes you cringe.
"Dave, it's okay, just relax." You try, but the air and John's voice feel like electricity on your skin.
"What happened? Where am I?" you croak, and your voice doesn't sound, doesn't feel like your own.
"You woke up, Dave. We're on board the Battlefield. It's safe here." He strokes a hand over your bare shoulder, pressing lightly into the dip of your clavicle. His hand is so warm compared to the cold of the table that you try to open your eyes, and instead end up staring into the sun, or whatever the fuck it is that's blinding you.
"Can someone shut that fucking light off?" The blind girl makes a noise and the light goes out. You manage to blink blearily up at Egbert. It hurts just to have your eyes open.
"Why do I hurt so much?" Even as your eyes are adjusting, you can make out his smile amongst the blur of colors.
"You've never used this body, Dave. It's brand new. We're attempting to heal your muscles, but the atrophy is pretty severe. It'll take a while."
It's still too bright and you're too dazed to really understand what he's saying, but your eyes come into focus, finally.
What you see makes no fucking sense.
John is ragged and worn, his clothes like stained cheesecloth hanging off of his skinny frame. He looks younger, impossibly younger, like fourteen or something, and is pale and dirty and his eyes are hard, not the clear blue you've always known. His glasses are held together with tape.
You let out a noise and close your eyes. It feels like ages before you open them again.
You witness scenes as you regain your strength. The blind girl, black hair now and gray-ish skin in front of the computer monitor she's working at. She has her back to you, and there's something yellow-red sticking out of her hair. The screen she works at is smeared, cracked, and archaic. Her clothes don't disguise the insect-sharpness of her bones through her skin.
Machinery clings and clangs around you at all hours. There's exposed pipes and wires everywhere, steam making the air humid and the smell of grease clinging to all surfaces. Slowly, the noises just become part of the scenery.
Eventually, you reach a point where you wake up and you don't feel like a sack of meat anymore, you actually feel alive. This prompts you to sit up.
Holy fuck, you're like beyond pale and skinny and really really naked. You glance around and spot a blanket. You're alone, and draw the blanket around your naked body.
After a moment, you feel like standing. You scoot across the cold table and hop down. Your knees nearly go out, and shit, why are you so short? There's a mirror hanging on the open door of a metal locker nearby, and you shuffle over and open the door to see your reflection.
For a second, you think someone's playing an elaborate hoax on you, because there is no way that can be your reflection.
The first thing that's wrong is that you're nearly bald. Almost as bad as that time that you'd been ironically growing your hair out and it'd caught on fire while you were messing with the microwave. Bro had been forced to give you a severe buzz cut, and yeah that's totally off topic.
Your eyes...your eyes were hazel before, right? For some reason, it doesn't feel all that strange to see red irises gazing back at you. And the fact that it doesn't feel weird just makes you feel twice as weird.
Your entire face is subtly changed- younger, for one, but your features are slightly altered. Your nose isn't as sharp, and your ears are slightly bigger, maybe?
You turn your head, and catch sight of something dark on the back of your head. Instinctively you react out and touch it, but before you can process the feeling of cold metal a zap of static electricity seems to jump from your fingers to the inside of your very brain, and straight through your nervous system.
After recovering, you notice the same dark spot on your inner elbow.
It's a metal socket, and a long needle and attached tube seems to run into your arm. You're about to pull it out when a voice behind you says,
"I wouldn't do that, fuckass. The endorphin cocktail that tube is serving you up is the only thing keeping you on your bipedal stalks."
You turn, schooling your face.
And the image that meets your eyes is nearly enough to crack your smooth veneer.
It's one of the black leather douchebags. The grumpy one, from the look on his face and amount of cursing. But his skin...it's grey and unnaturally smooth, even a little shiny. Black hair still, but he has candy-corn little nub horns and shark teeth inside of his little sneer. He's wearing the same grubby clothes as John and blind girl...oh, fuck, now that you think about, she looked like this too.
Shark teeth stretch into a smug grin.
"Contain your debased shock, human Dave. As much fun as being saddled with your near-dead corpse was, we need your ass up and doing shit." You give a carefully controlled smirk in response, only it doesn't feel as controlled as it used to be. Also it's kind of bright, and you're trying not to squint.
"And who the fuck do you think you are to start ordering me around like you own said pasty ass?" Your voice is hoarse and lacking it's usual drawl. You feel oddly more naked than you actually are without your familiar accent. Mr. Monster scowls, just as tight and careful as your own expressions.
"The Captain of this ship, which you currently live on, and the one who pulled your pathetic floating fleshbag out of the waste soup. Also I helped create your entire universe. So I think I have plenty of authority over you." He bares his teeth in something like a smile, or maybe a snarl. His cheekbones could cut glass.
[a memory floats up. a pod. green slime. metal tubes disconnect to your limbs as the slime drains. acres of pods stretch out in both directions, each holding a pale, still body.
it dawns on you that this might be reality. that this is what you were supposed to wake up to.]
"Where's John?" you ask, and your voice cracks traitorously. Captain Authority Dickwad raises an eyebrow, his expression twisting into cruel delight.
"Egbert? Why, are you two moirails or something? I know he's flushed for you, but jegus cris, I didn't think it was mutual."
You stare blankly. That was total fucking nonsense. His expression draws in as he reads the incomprehension on your face, and he rolls his eyes.
"Fine. Egbert should be running simulations. First we should cover your disgusting carapace though. No one wants to see that shit." You make yap-yap motions at him, and he turns and starts walking away. You follow the tube in your arm to a little pouch on hanging from a coat hanger, which is full of clear liquid. You hold the thing up in the air like a retard as you follow him.
There's rooms everywhere, submarine doors, and they branch off of the twisting metal catwalk you follow him along. There are other grey people, some of whom you recognize- blind girl introduces herself as Terezi and grins an unnatural grin at you- and others you don't. Captain Hitherto Unnamed curses as a guy with huge bronco horns walks past on robot legs, and he stutters, "Uh, sorry, Karkat. I didn't mean to, uh, be in the way."
You both duck under his horns, and Karkat McBitchface leads you into a room, where he measures you like a cranky little Chinese lady. He hands you clothes. They're thin and badly made, but surprisingly warm when you pull them on. You're gawky and tall (not as tall as you were), and you send up a silent prayer that you're not going through puberty for a second frigging time. Once was more than enough.
You're pulling on woolly, slightly huge socks and brown leather boots when the door cracks open, and John sticks his head inside.
"Dave! You're awake!" Instantly John glomps you, and you hug him back a little. Just a little.
He's holding a flashlight, and shines the damn thing all around him as he grins.
"It's so dark on this ship, right? I could barely stand it at first, but then I found this flashlight, and it helps a little!"
"Are you kidding, Egbert, that thing is fucking blinding. Turn that shit off, it's fine in here." John makes a confused face, and suddenly Karkat grabs your chin and forces you to look up at him. He stares critically at your face for a long moment.
"His eyes are extremely photosensitive, John. His pupils aren't even dilated in this light. Gimme your flashthing." He takes John's flashlight and puts it over your face for a half-second. You hiss and try to pull back -that's fucking bright, and rude- and Karkat laughs.
"At least one of you humans won't be completely useless in the dark. Thank gog." You swat at him as hard as you can and wrench your chin free. He grins like a feral Cheshire Cat at you.
"John, can I get some kind of explanation as to what the ever living fuck is going on here? Because I gotta tell you bro, I'm massively confused." John and Karkat share a look, and John takes your hand, your hanger full of drugs, and helps you up.
"C'mon. I'll explain everything," he says softly, and draws you down the hall with him.
The catwalk opens into a round hub of a room. There's a bank of complicated computers, and a ring of the same lethal looking dentist chairs in the middle of the room, hooked up to all kinds of weird stuff.
He takes you to a chair, and asks you to sit.
"The last time I was in one of those you ripped something out of me. I'd rather not do that again." He smiles reassuringly and gently corrals you into the chair. You lay back stiffly, and he stands over you, hand still clasped around yours. He takes something and puts it to the back of your head, and before you can register that it's sharp and long and cold he touches that metal socket at the base of your skull with it.
"No, w-" You start to pull away, but he shoves you down and then shoves it in.
It feels like he's pierced your cerebellum with it, you're going to die any second from the pain of it-
-you blink. There's a very vague sort of ache in your neck, but no pain. John stands across from you, looking clean and older and like the John you knew before you woke up. You're tall again, you notice, and you wear normal clothes and your shades are back, and your hair.
"What the fuck, John." He shrugs, smiling sheepishly.
"Sorry. It's necessary to show you certain things, and that means plugging in." You scowl.
"I thought the point was to get out of Skaia?" He shrugs again.
"You're getting ahead. Let me explain from the beginning."
[Battleship. 04:14. John's cabin]
John explained from the beginning.
At first, you refused to believe him. A video game hijacking reality? Really, Egbert, you weren't born yesterday. Come the fuck on.
Then you start to panic. Everyone you know is a living battery. Rose, Jade, Christ, your brother is in one of those pods right now, and John says it's not safe to pull him out, not safe until the you can come into your powers.
He started to explain the time shit, but then Aradia stepped in, said about three sentences, and everything just slid into place.
Now you have a broken nose and are swaddled in four blankets, sweating to death. John fusses over you like he always does.
"Remember that time we met up at your house, and the four of us fell asleep in a pile on your bed?" you ask hoarsely. You think he was saying something, but you weren't paying attention, and he stops. You haven't spoken since they pulled you out of the simulation.
"Yeah, Dave, I remember," he says, soft and fragile.
"I just wish it could be like that again," you say, and it's dark and quiet and there's a blanket covering most of your face so it's okay to be weak, just for this moment. Besides, it's John. John knows everything about you, even when you wish he didn't.
John crawls up onto his bed with you, unwrapping half of your blankets and then tucking the two of you together in a blanket caccoon. You close your eyes and pretend the wall pressed up against your back is Jade, the bunny digging into your hip is Rose's knee, and you fall asleep.