(Untitled)

[godhooded]

Who: John Egbert, Vriska Serket, Rose Lalonde, Tavros Nitram
When: After rooms have been discovered, and clothing has been located.
Where: Recreation room.
What: A bunch of online friends meet in person!
Rating: G
Warnings: None.

Comments

[dualn8ured]

If Vriska hadn't been distracted with her roommate going through her stuff, she most definitely would have popped out of that door to say hello. But that had provided a bit of a distraction, and more importantly, she'd been able to take a few minutes to get her act together. It went without saying that she was of two minds about actually meeting John; on the one hand, she was honestly happy to see him, but on the other? She had a way of sabotaging most all of her friendships one way or another.

...she didn't particularly want to sabotage this one.

The other two? Well, she knew Tavros, so there was no anxiety there.

Rose was the unknown factor. The two hadn't spoken directly - sure, she'd left a message on her Pesterchum account, but that was only because John wasn't answering his. And yes, Kanaya had said some stuff about her not being half-bad. That...really didn't say a lot either way.

Either way, no avoiding it now.

Vriska stood outside for a few minutes, fiddling with her hair. For all that she definitely didn't look human, she could be picky about her appearance. Vriska was just about average height for a girl her age, except her horns made her a bit taller, and she was on the skinny side. Her hair? Unruly on a good day. But, well, nothing to do for it now.

After a minute, she took a deep breath, got her usual bravado back up, and stepped inside. "Hi."

[godhooded]

John would have really liked it if he hadn't been startled. If he had been able to sit up from the couch calmly, it could have made the rest of this interaction easier as a direct result. He was sure of it. Instead, his movements felt jerky and unsure. Should he get up casually? Jump up quickly to show excitement? Did any of it really matter..?

In the end, he had to believe that it didn't. Otherwise, this conversation was going to go nowhere, and it would probably be like blood in the water to Vriska. It actually made him smile (even more) to imagine her poking fun at him for spending any time at all worrying over something so inane while she's standing there waiting for him to greet her. Luckily, he was pretty sure he could totally avoid any conversation like that as long as he said something and didn't just stare like a moron.

Staring like a moron was tempting, though. It was one thing to see the video feed, quite another to see her in person. A real life alien, and his real life friend. Even though it was pretty bright in the room, her eyes still seemed to glow, especially with how they were rimmed in those blue eyelashes. Over her shoulders, he saw the transparent wings. They moved with her, like a butterfly, immediately dismissing any comparison to strap-on dress-up fairy wings.

"Vriska!" he said as he finished scrambling back to his feet. "Wow, you look so cool."

[dualn8ured]

Vriska wasn't expecting that startle. Sure, if she'd come in doing an acrobatic pirouette, it might have been cause for John to start. But so far as she knew, saying 'hi' was an appropriate form of human greeting. Humans sure were weird.

But none of that really mattered. She really would have poked fun at him had she known he'd been worrying over what to do just then. She was just about to ask if a fierce felinebeast had caught his tongue, but fortunately, that wasn't necessary.

"So do you," she finally answered, managing a smile. "I've got to say, I feel pretty lucky, getting to meet you. And sooner than I'd thought!"

[godhooded]

His nervousness forgotten, John found it easy to laugh. He let himself fall back down onto the couch. This wasn't nearly as difficult as he had feared. He should have known better. It was hard to admit that maybe Karkat had freaked him out a little. And maybe trolls were a little scary, considering they were aliens who thought it was okay to kill people, but then just like a human should, they felt bad about it afterwards. Or at least Vriska had started to, and John had believed her. Still believed her.

Even though having everyone (well, not everyone, he thought sadly) here was making him kind of jumpy, it was really reassuring. Now he could just be nervous about dumb stuff, like was Rose going to be just like she was online? Was Vriska poisonous? Would they watch any Nic Cage films with him? Well, actually, he probably knew the answer to that last one.

"You always feel pretty lucky," he said, and waved both his hands at her as if to blow away the doubt that Vriska could be anything but lucky. "Now I can be lucky by association, though."

[pupa_pansy]

Tavros hadn't seen John's vlog, or perhaps just skipped past it without knowing who it was, but he had noticed Vriska's fairy wings disappearing into the room while he explored the nearby hallways. And now he was properly cleaned up and had his full inventory again.

Unfortunately, it also took him a moment to build up the nerve to confront her again. He had to remind himself of all of the horrible things she said, and did, and said that she did, even if she said it was really for everyone's good. And he had to remind himself that he had lots of confidence now, even if it was fake confidence, and he would probably certainly be successful.

So mentally equipped, he summoned his lance and followed the Hero of Light into the room.

"Vriska, now that I found you, and we are both prepared, again, it's time for me to stop you, heroically, from doing more bad things."

[lovecrafty]

Rose showered as quickly as she could, which had everything to do with not being covered in slime and nothing at all to do with hoping to see John before the troll horde descended.  She'd been his friend for much longer, but she couldn't help feeling that she lacked one thing Vriska had.  As practiced as she was in the art of subterfuge, she couldn't pretend to feign interest in his unbelievably shitty movie collection.  It was his one weapon in deciphering the behavior of Rose Lalonde; he could assume everything she uttered was sarcasm, an assault she was powerless to combat except by sincerity, be it real or artifice.  It just worked better if she hadn't spent months deriding it at every opportunity.

She dressed and hurried out, though she knew she had once again missed her opportunity.  Being a Seer had its advantages.

She might have missed the second troll's entrance, if he hadn't needed to stop to reinforce his fragile psyche.  As it was, Rose followed him in.  When he had finished his faltering gambit, she looped a short web of yarn, strung between two regular knitting needles, around the tip of the lance and pulled until it stood vertical.  She let one needle slip, and the web unraveled.

In a human, Rose would have called it overcompensation.  When it came to trolls, her experiences had been as limited as pesterchum blocks were porous, which was a lot.  The accusation, then, was likely genuine.  "I don't suppose you'd care to explain on what premise would inspire such an upstanding young gentletroll could embark upon such an extreme course?"

She looked past Vriska to the boy in blue pajamas.  "Hello, John."  

[dualn8ured]

"It's awfully rude to make a threat on someone's life in front of others, Taaaaaaaavros. Didn't your lusus teach you better than that?"

Vriska tossed her hair back, shrugging her shoulders. "I mean, I haven't even done anything that merits it. And if you haven't noticed? This isn't our universe, so whatever I might have been plotting or scheming about is now a completely moot point."

She waved a hand again, in a sweeping gesture towards John and Rose. "It's not their universe, either, as far as I'm aware. Given that, I think it would be in your best interest to put the lance away now before you accidentally run someone through with it."

With that said, she turned, inspecting Rose. "TT, I presume? A pleasure to make your acquaintance." Any semblance her grin had towards that of a spider? Purely coincidental, this time.

[godhooded]

"Hi Rose!" John greeted, calling out over the swiftly growing awkwardness of Vriska and... Tavros. John looked quickly between the two of them, and if he were completely honest with himself, he'd have been slightly worried that there was going to be a troll showdown right here.

This was not the kind of reunion he had been hoping for. Nothing bad had happened yet, but with every passing second things got weirder and weirder. Maybe he should have thought this through and met each one of them individually, and then... huh. Well, it wouldn't have fixed much. It would have given him more time to talk to Vriska and Rose before the death threats came out, though.

Tavros didn't seem like a mean guy, was the thing. John considered briefly that mean trolls were actually the nice ones, and the nice trolls were the dangerous ones. Karkat could definitely be mean, but John knew not to take it seriously. Vriska was a little mean, and she was nice to John in her own way. Of course, she also had told him about all the other trolls she had killed, one of them being Tavros. Okay, it was time to abandon that theory. It was stupid.

John got up from his casual dude seat and made a beeline (a curved beeline, so as to avoid getting between Vriska and Tavros' showdown) for Rose. He stopped a little short and bounced on his heels while grinning at her with an expression that seemed to say haha, trolls are weird.

"Hey Tavros, I can definitely vouch for Vriska. If she says she's not going to do anything, then she won't." John rubbed the back of his head. He wasn't really mad at Vriska for anything, at least not anymore, but it was hard to explain to someone who had really gotten worked up about it. "There's not enough room to fight with a lance in here anyway, dude."

[pupa_pansy]

Tavros was caught off-guard as his lance was pulled upward, and his stand-off with Vriska was interrupted. He tried to stay angry while the human and Vriska talked, but... unfortunately, they were right.

"Well, because she's basically done, a lot of bad things, and will probably do more bad things, and is mean and insulting, and, maybe, I want to save everyone... from her plans..." He was losing steam as he talked, at least more than usual. Yes, he was angry, but he had also been convinced he was going to save everyone - especially Jade, and maybe not accidentally kill a member of her bizarre human family this time oops - by stopping Vriska's schemes.

However, if they were trapped here on this ship in some other previously-unmentioned universe, there wasn't much chance her schemes for Jack could hurt anyone. They obviously weren't in the Medium and he couldn't even find Trollian to talk to anyone else on these computers. So her schemes were, effectively, stopped.

He was also distracted when he realized who the humans were, at Vriska's comment. He spent more time focusing on Dave and Jade than paying attention to the Seer or Heir, and hadn't recognized them at first. That only made him more self-conscious about his first impression, which apparently they didn't find nearly as heroic or courageous as he was trying to be.

"Oh, well... I guess... it's not the best time... or place then..." he wasn't going to go through with it now, with Vriska pretending to be friendly and the humans here disapproving, but it was hard to let go of his heroic moment now that he'd finally had one. His face fell as he let his lance return to his strife deck. "Umm, well, I guess, hello, then."

Oh well. He probably would have messed it up somehow anyway.

[lovecrafty]

"The pleasure is all mine," she replied to Vriska, and if her answering smile bore any passing resemblance to genuine emotion, it was blotted out by the one she turned on John.

He was busy practicing his leadership skills on the complex web of troll relationships, which was not nearly as complicated as certain members of the race liked to argue, but did add a few interesting facets to the practice.

"I said it before, but it seems pertinent to reiterate in person. Happy birthday." Societal obligations discharged, it was time to figure out what was going on.

The two trolls were demonstrably inhuman. Skin, horns, glowing yellow eyes, all spoke to their inhumanity. Not literally. That would be incredibly silly. Overarchingly ludicrous. Which meant what, in terms of universe causality?

"Does anyone know whose fault this is?" She waved a hand to signify the ship, and not the catastrophic romance failure unfurling between Tavros and Vriska. The trolls had blamed them for a lot of things, some of them justified, but none of them had involved a third universe. A distinct lack of third universes had been present, in fact.

[dualn8ured]

"I've hardly had time to clean that slime off and change, much less start any scheming. While I find the accusation oddly flattering, Tavros, for the moment you're giving me too much credit." Vriska flipped her hair back out of her face, then shrugged her shoulders. At least there wasn't something deadly being pointed at her anymore. That was a start.

She hummed a bit as she watched the gears in Rose's head turning, letting her own begin whirring to life. Sure, there was a lot of stuff that could be blamed on the humans, but Vriska didn't think this was one of those things.

One person - or troll, or whatever he was - floated to the forefront of her mind. That guy. The one who constantly irritated her, not least for making her highlight everything he typed. What a jerk.

"Has anyone else talked to a strange guy who only used white text? He said some pretty weird stuff to me. I'm willing to bet this is somehow his fault, given he pretty much stated omniscience and implied omnipotence. Unless someone has a better idea?"