Snippet #2299472

Zuriik awoke, quite suddenly. There was no slow sequence, just a quick return to consciousness. Just the feeling of being submerged. Zuriik opened his eyes to an expanse of dark looking green. “Sopor. But it’s been diluted or something. It’s like, weaker now.” he thought to himself. He reached his hands out of the slimy concoction and pulled himself above the surface. With a deep breath of fresh air, he lurched forward, falling out of the Recuperacoon with a wet splotch, waking up a slumbering Freddy in the corner. “What the fuck!? Oh, Zuriik. You’re awake. Wait. You’re...awake? Holy shit, you’re awake. Huzzah!”

“Save the applause Fred, I’m a little wiped out at the moment.” Zuriik rolled onto his back, wheezing with exhaustion at the minor effort of movement after a long time if being stationary. "Fuck. How long was I out?"

"Like three days man, give or take."

"That long, huh?"

"What happened to you? You kinda died there for a minute."

"Yeah, about that..." Zuriik began to explain the tale of what he had experienced while unconscious, with the exception of his crazy dreams. As he did so, he steadily moved more and more until he could stand on his own. He went through a rudimentary yoga routine to wake up his muscles more, Freddy just standing by and listening to his story. "...so that's really it."

"Woah."

"Hey Freddy?"

"Yeah, what's up?"

"Where are my clothes?"

It was as if he noticed for the first time that Zuriik was covered in slime and wearing only his underwear. He blushed, his cheeks coloring in with teal. "Oh. Uh. Right. Sorry. They're over here, let me go get them." He left the room as fast as his legs could carry him.

Zuriik was alone in the makeshift bedroom, at least for now. It wasn't very nice by many standards, but for him it was. Besides the Recuperacoon, it had a table and chest. Freddy entered the room then, laying a pile of clothes and a towel down on the table and scurrying away again. Zuriik wiped himself off and dressed, exiting the room into the hallway, which lead into the transportalizer hub. Freddy stood right, nervously twiddling his thumbs. “Hey, Fred. I’ve got a quick question or two. Cool?”

“Yeah, sure man.”

“The crabby troll. What’s his name?”

“That’s Karkat.”

“Blind chick?”

“Terezi.”

“Dude with the metal legs?”

“Tavros.”

“Polite and proper girl with a chainsaw?”

“Kanaya.”

“Drugged up clown?”

“Danavel.”

“The one whose name I don’t know.”

“Ah, then Gamzee.”

“Strong one who is also a mechanic?”

“Equius.”

“Glub girl and duality psychic.”

“Feferi and Sollux.”

“Douchefins?”

“Probably Eridan.”

“Spiderbitch.”

“Definitely Vriska. So I guess that leaves-”

“Nepeta.”

“-Nepeta. Wait...how do you already know her name?”

“Don’t you remember? I told you, I met her on Derse before we entered The Medium.”

After a moment or two of thinking, realization covered Freddy’s face as he put two and two together. “She’s the cat-troll!”

“What? Of course she is. How have you just now figured this out?”

“Well, I was a little too busy making sure you didn’t kill yourself in your sleep or anything.”

“And yet you managed to recall all their names.”

“I’ve got a really good memory for names.” Freddy punched Zuriik’s shoulder. “Dude, you’re on the same asteroid as the girl of your dreams! Kinda literally your dreams to.”

“Yes, I know. Just...don’t tell anyone about the whole...fact that I’m super flushed for her, okay?”

“My lips are sealed.”

“You didn’t already tell anyone about that, did you?”

“Nah bro, I just told them about The Pain and the visions, at least as much as you told me. I didn’t think you’d want me to tell anyone about your long distance flush-crush or anything.”

“Thanks man.”

“Anytime. So what now?”

“I’m going to go introduce myself again, I suppose. Then just play it by ear.”

“Oh, by the way, Karkat wanted to talk to you about something when you woke up. Well...he said if...but you get the idea. You sure you’re okay to be up and walking?”

“I’ll be fine. Later Freddy.”

“Later Zuriik.”

The two of them parted ways, Freddy heading back to who knows where while his friend stepped into the computer room through a transportalizer. Most of the trolls were present, either typing on chat windows or just sitting around. Nepeta wasn’t there for whatever reason, neither was Freddy of course. Equius was also absent, though everyone else who could be accounted for was. Gale and Danavel seemed to have integrated themselves rather well, they looked like a part of the one big happy family that were currently living their lives on an asteroid in the middle of nowhere. One big happy fucking lie. The crabmeister himself was seated in front of a computer, deep in typed conversation. No one really noticed Zuriik when entered, nor when he walked behind Karkat. From his vantage point over the cancer’s shoulder, Zuriik could see who Karkat was talking to. Whoever the guy was, he looked pretty alien. Weird colored skin, no horns, typing in sky blue of all colors.
“So these are the humans I’ve heard about, huh?”

Karkat jumped a foot in the air, whirling around to face Zuriik. “Fuck! Don’t sneak up on me like that.” His face was slightly flushed with red and he looked as if he had just been caught with his pants down.

“Whatcha doin there Karkat? Having some kind of crossdimensional interspecies hate-date?”

“No! It’s purely platonic. Wait. You’re one of the new guys, aren’t you?”

“Zuriik is the name you are looking for.”

“Right. Didn’t you die or something?”

Zuriik shrugged. “I got better.”

“And how do you know my name?”

He tapped his temple, sitting down in a nearby chair as he did so. “Visions, remember? I used to see the future.”

“Used to?”

“Yeah. Turns out the whole thing was some crazy scheme by a dick future version of myself. I told him to knock it off.”

Karkat rolled his eyes. “Sort of preaching to the choir about the assholish future self.”

“Oh,” Zuriik replied sarcastically, “so your future self ruined your life by mutating you into a freak and giving you daily doses of extreme suffering? And I thought I was the only one.”

" I'm sure you had a tough fucking life, you don't have to be a dick about it."

Refusing to respond, Zuriik instead scanned the room, looking at the various trolls who were doing - in his view - fuck all. "So why contact the humans anyway? What's up with that?"

"We're trying to...help them...sort of."

"Why? What's so important about them?"

"You know how you get a universe if you win Sgrub?"

"Not until now. Never really got that far in the game."

"The humans are our universe's inhabitants. We...got shut out of our prize by this guy, Jack Noir. And now we're stuck on this stupid asteroid."

"Right." The transportalizer flared into life behind Zuriik as a troll left the room (probably Tavros by the clanking sound he made). "So why did you want to see me anyway?"

"Just wanted to tell you to stay out of trouble. And don't fuck around with the humans. This is a very delacate process, any wrong word could potentially screw up the entire thing."

"Got it, later Karkat." Zuriik turned and left the red-blooded troll. Since there was a computer open, he decided to completely ignore Karkats orders and talk to some humans anyway. He sat down and pulled out his computer goggles to copy over his Trollian account. As he was rummaging around his inventory, attempting to balance out the scales, Zuriik noticed that Clockwork was doing some weird stuff in his strife specibus. He pulled out the red scythe after his goggles, examining Clockwork. The blade was now marked with some sort of digital display, steadily counting down. "The fuck is this?" he asked of no one in particular.

“Clockwork is out of charge.” echoed a voice out of nowhere. Zuriik leapt a foot in the air and looked around, attempting to locate the source of the sound. “This is The Ensightened. I am speaking to you in your mind. As I was saying, your scythe has run out of power. The ability you used to travel through paradox space is incredibly powerful and Clockwork needs some time...and some Time to repair itself.”

“I thought I told you never to talk to me again.” Zuriik mumbled under his breath.

“You need some guidance at the moment. Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you what path you should take in the future, I place that responsibility in your hands now. And all that that responsibility entails. I just decided to step in and give you a little tip about Clockwork, seeing as how I have mastered the weapon much more than you have. You see the little switch there by the base? Flick it.”

“What the fuck are you talking about...oh. I didn’t know that was there.” He did as he was told and a small cord popped out of the blunt end of the scythe. “Plug that into your computer.” Zuriik followed directions and pushed the male bit of the cord into the female port in the computer. Every computer in the entire room shut off, going dark for a moment. After a couple of seconds, they turned on again, amidst a multitude of “what the fuck?”s and the single “what the glub?” Thankfully, nothing seemed to be lost, so no troll was the wiser. Except for Zuriik. His chat window had quite strangely been taken over by a list of twenty-digit number and letter combinations, some in different colors as well. “This is a directory of different contactable human sessions, all playing their equivalent of Sgrub. The red ones signify off limits sessions and that one green one there is the session that your new...friends are contacting.”

“So what about the blue one?”

“I’m not really sure about the blue session. It’s somewhat important in the grand scheme of things, but my vision is blurred in that section of space and time. I’d suggest not messing with that one”

Zuriik grinned at this. “As much as I would love to disobey Karkat’s orders, I think that that ignoring your advice is a hundred times more fun.” He moved his cursor over to the blue session’s code and clicked once. After a short loading screen, his chat window now showed four unfamiliar screen names. “valdephonousHost, rocketingHeir, dashingFalcon and smilingUrsurper. So these are some humans huh?” There was no response from The Ensightened. Zuriik shugged and prepared to contact one of the humans when four more names were suddenly added to the list.

“Here. I thought you might like it if you could both ignore me and disobey Karkat at the same time.”

“That’s quite considerate of you. Wait, why would you want me to go against Karkat?”

“I’m you, remember? I was just as sick of his authority as you are, or will be. Might as well let you get some good laughs in before the shit hits the whirling device.”

“Alright. So you’ve started seeing things from my point of view, huh?”

“Not really. I still think you’re being a total idiot. But you’ll come around eventually. No reason to rush things.”

“Whatever. Can you stop talking to me now, I’m in the mood to contact some aliens.” Silence on the other end of the mind-o-phone. Awesome. It was time to get to work. Or play, rather.

slayronicJustiscythe [SJ] began trolling ectoBiologist [EB]

[SJ]: m4ats nb, stnbiq 4nwau?
[EB]: um. excuse me?
[EB]: what?
[SJ]: [I said: What’s up, stupid human?]
[EB]: oh. well, i’m doing pretty well. it’s my twelfth birthday and all.
[SJ]: m4at t43 fnck is a pirt4qay?
[EB]: It’s like...a celebration of when you were born.
[EB]: seriously, you don’t know what a birthday is?
[SJ]: m3ll, trolls qou’t r3ally 4ave pist4qays. me 4ave mriggliug qays iust3aq.
[EB]: uh...okay?
[EB]: so you’re another troll, huh?
[SJ]: piugo.
[EB]: are you going to be mean to me too?
[SJ]: m4at? m4y moulq i qo t4at?
[EB]: because every other troll i have talked to has.
[EB]: so not all of you are mean? i thought that was kind of a troll thing.
[SJ]: …
[EB]: what?
[SJ]: [Cutting out the typing quirk for a second, what the actual fuck?]
[SJ]: [Are you really just that much of a stupid racist fuckhead to think that our entire species is a whole congregations of assholes?]
[SJ]: [Alright, granted a good percentage of them are guilty of that. But not all. There are plenty of considerate and kind trolls too.]
[SJ]: [You’d better fucking recognize that before you get on the wrong side of a psychotic highblood.]
[EB]: yeah, i’ll be honest. i understood none of that.
[SJ]: …
[SJ]: m4at’s yonr uaw3 auymay?
[EB]: my uaw3?
[SJ]: [Name. What’s your stupid fucking human name?]
[EB]: john egbert. nice to meet you! :)
[SJ]: 4oly fnck t4at is a stnbiq uaw3.
[EB]: hey! i thought you said you were going to be nice!
[SJ]: i said uot4iug of t43 sort. put...
[SJ]: 43llo John 4nwau. wy uaw3 is Zuriik Taroql.
[EB]: and you called my name wierd?
[SJ]: it’s a watter of b3rsb3ctiv3.
[EB]: alright, whatever. :)
[SJ]: y3a4. (: to yon too.
[EB]: so what do you want anyway?
[SJ]: 7nst maut3q to 43lb yon ont a littl3 pit. mit4 iuforwatiou auq snc4.
[SJ]: so m4at qo yon maut to kuom?
[EB]: out of anything?
[SJ]: ynb.
[EB]: um...
[EB]: what’s the meaning of life?
[SJ]: liv3.
[EB]: just live? that’s kinda...
[EB]: simple.
[SJ]: it’s life, uot a fnckiug riqql3.
[EB]: i thought life was a riddle.
[SJ]: i qou’t t4iuk so. i w3au. i’w uot r3ally oue to talk t4ong4.
[SJ]: i w3au. i’v3 liv3q wy 3utir3 lif3 for lov3. so y3a4.
[SJ]: i gn33s lif3 is w4at yon wak3 of it.
[EB]: aww. that’s really cute. :)
[SJ]: m4at?
[EB]: you’ve lived your life for love? that’s such an adorable thing to say.
[SJ]: …
[SJ]: John 4nwau?
[EB]: yeah?
[SJ]: s4nt t43 fnck nb.
[EB]: oh.
[SJ]: (:
[EB]: oh!
[EB]: well you shut the fuck up too zuriik! :)
[SJ]: rig4t. i’ll l3av3 yon for uom t43u. lat3r John.
[EB]: alright, see you later man.

slayronicJustiscythe [SJ] ceased trolling ectoBiologist [EB]