harlequinhater | 001. [TEXT]

001. [TEXT]

uh... hello? does anybody read these memo things?
is this some kind of prank? i wouldn't put it past terezi to pull something dumb like this.
so terezi if you're reading this can we just go through the "gotcha" moment and can you send me back?

anyways if you are NOT terezi and this is NOT a prank could somebody please tell me what's going on?
because last thing i can remember i was running a bunch of weird time errands for an alien girl.
and then i woke up here in a bed that is definitely NOT mine because it doesn't have cool ghost bed sheets.
also apparently i have a mom now?
she is nice i guess and this lunch box looks delicious, don't get me wrong!
but i was doing some important things!
i don't have time to be playing with this cloud bird thing!!!
(though it is a very cute cloud bird, i will give it that.)

i have tried to get back but my weird time jumping powers do not seem to work here.
and i cannot even fly anymore which is such bullshit! i forgot how lame it was to walk around everywhere.
also my sylladex is gone. so i don't have any of my cool computers or weapons.
instead i just have a backpack and this lame "poke gear" thing which doesn't even have pesterchum installed.
so. yeah.
could somebody fill me in, please?

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Okay. One second.

[And there's exactly one second of disorienting mind travel, and then:]

Hey.

[There's Dave, sitting on Karkat.]

[It takes John a moment to shake off the disorientation of being teleported - but then his face breaks into a huge smile, because there's Dave! And... some other human guy who looks kind of familiar. Whatever!]

Dave! Oh man is it good to see you in person again. I know it hasn't actually been that long since I last hugged it out with some other version of you but it feels like ages. Come on!

[And he holds his arms out as wide as they go. Dave get over here, it is bro hugging time.]

[—Oh what the hell.]

Dave!

[He hisses the name not-quite-under his breath and gives the fucking giraffe camped out on top of him a smack, squirming to try and free himself. What is with these assholes and sitting on him lately? Sure it's technically just the second time but goddammit, Dave, you could have at least let him be STANDING when fucking John turned up!]

You regurgitated sack of effluent mucus, get the fuck off of me!

[It doesn't really need to be said when Dave's probably going to head over for that hug anyway, but it still makes him feel better. This is such bullshit.]

Gross.

[Dave makes sure to squash Karkat's face as he gets up--serves you right, fucklord--and stands, tilts his chin to indicate how hard he's rolling his eyes, how tolerant he's being of John's weird super-friendly "hugging" custom, and goes in for the bro hug bump.

God. He hugs John tightly, and if Dave were perhaps less of a noodle and more of an awesome hard swordsman, maybe he could have even lifted him. Best friend affection secured, though. He's missed John so much.]

Maybe it's only been like five minutes for you, but some of us have no recollection of meeting you in person, like. Ever? Windghosting through my room for two seconds does not fucking count.

[John doesn't return the hug quite as strongly as Dave does, but he still makes it tight and warm, and he has decided he isn't going to be the first one to let go. Sure, maybe he had only hugged a Dave an hour or so ago, but he gets to stay with this Dave. That counts for something.]

I'm sorry! Things just got sort of crazy for a bit. And I didn't really figure out how to control the windghosting until recently. But now we can hang out and have all kinds of friendship adventures in person without uncontrollable teleportation or death.

[It's about now that John looks over Dave's shoulder at the human he had previously been sitting on. He doesn't recognize who he is immediately, but Jade had mentioned Karkat is a human now, and who else speaks like that?]

Oh my god, Karkat? Is that you? Oh man, it's weird to see you all human-colored now.

[Fuck you, too, bulgejockey, and argh, god, what is with humans and hugging anyway? Dave isn't like this on his own, nor is Rose, so just. What.

Grumbling to himself, Karkat hoists himself to his feet and very tactfully lets the two get on with their (really rather long?) platonic friendship whatever while he makes a cursory attempt fix his rumpled clothes. Damn Dave for tackling him anyway, who does that? Besides humans and Nepeta. Nevermind, stupid question.

He glances over again when John says his name, rolling his eyes because who else and also thanks for the reminder, assclown, how could he have forgotten!]

Yeah, it's me. Nice to see you when I'm not getting fucking impaled, as magical an experience as that was.

[Either time, even. Ugh.]

Hehehe.

[Speaking of Jade, of course she's sitting nearby watching all of this going on. A significantly bigger cloud bird is at her side serving as a pillow of sorts.]

I told you! He's super cute, right?

[Now it's Jade's turn to hop up and join the hug, turning it into one big group hug. What can she say, she missed her ecto twin.]

Welcome to the world of Pokemon, John Egbert!

Jade!

[John extracts one arm from Dave so that he can properly pull Jade into the group hug. No way is he letting his ecto-sister get away without some good, solid, hugging action. Hell, Karkat is going to get hugged too, but that can wait until after these other two hugs are hugged to completion. It's just the way heartfelt reunions are done!]

Thanks for the warm welcome, guys. I've gotta say, I'm so ready to be done with SBURB for a while. This game seems at least ten times more fun, even without the cool super powers.

[HUGS FOR EVERYBODY okay that's enough. Dave gets squirmy after a while and slips himself free, ruffles John's hair up into even worse shape.]

Okay, but I still gotta find somebody to lodge a complaint with. It makes no sense that some of these fuckers can fly laden with our aerodynamically unsound asses and we can't. I call bullshit, Pokéworld. Bullllllllshit.

[—"Super cute." Karkat grimaces but doesn't bother snapping "adorabloodthirsty" to correct her because 1) she's probably just saying it to fuck with him anyway, 2) shit's overplayed by this point even if it's still accurate, goddammit, and 3) priorities, namely how stupidly happy all three of them looked tangled together like that.

He misses Kanaya and Terezi. Fuck, he misses everyone but the clown, how ridiculous is that? Pull it together, Karkat.

Glancing at Dave, he snorts and rolls his eyes at all three of them.]

Oh, the tragedy of it all. Reduced to mere mortals, literally pedestrian, how will you poor god tiers cope? Your pain must be legendary. I for one am touched, or maybe that's just a precursor to me finally achieving my lifelong dream of becoming so nauseated I puke out of every orifice. Can we move the fuck on now, I'd like to maybe not have to listen to more shit from you people than you're already desperately clenching your inflamed sphincters to contain.

Oh, shut the fuck up Karkat Crabpants! [It's said in a good natured tone as Jade also releases her brother and ruffles his hair.] John's already missed so much here, and he needs to meet Ruby and Penny and--oh damn, so many people!

[John allows the other two to leave the hug, and even allows his hair to be ruffled, though the action causes his Swablu to flutter down to his shoulder instead.]

I think I've already met Penny, kind of? She sent me a long message about how there are people from different worlds here. Though geez, how many new friends have you guys made? Is there anybody else from Sburb here?

[Then he's off to Karkat in his new, squishier human form. Yeah, you're getting hugged too, buddy.]

[Dave stands by with his hands in his pockets and a satisfied air about him as John goes to hug the Katkat.]

Nah, just us. Though a lot of people here have met us before, through time shenanigans.

[NOT EVEN GOING TO DIGNIFY THAT WITH A RESPONSE, HARLEY. As for the rest of it, he's—okay, he's somewhat accustomed to Jade's hugging of everyone and everything, but he somehow hadn't expected her ecto-sibling to share that trait. Is it genetic? How do human genetics work? Whatever the case, he's only just too late to back away in time, and yep, there it goes, he's being hugged.]

Goddammit, John, would you—ugh.

[Trolls are not a naturally huggy species, this is weird, get off please. He'd tolerated it from Jade because he'd been too stunned at the time to react (it had nothing at all to do with any former or current crushes at all, shut up), but from John, it's. It's. sADSjghafghjsdjlkha how do normal friend hugs work, do they even have a relationship where hugs are appropriate, should he be pushing him off? Oh god, what if he interprets that as more caliginous flirting, what if it is caliginous flirting, what if this hug is caliginous flirting, John has to know he's uncomfortable with it, what the HELL.

Karkat gives him a tentative push, just to see if he'll let go. Are they done yet. Is the hug done yet. Please say the hug is done, this is stupid.]

Would you let the fuck go already.

Penny does that sometimes, that's just how she is!

[Being a robot would do that, but Jade promised Penny to not just go sharing that information with people.]

We've made a lot of friends, not just from the people that knew us before--mostly Dave, though, you know how that Strider charm is! Oh--we have so many things to show you here besides all of our cool new friends, there's a baseball stadium too!

[John lingers for a moment after the push, just because he can't let Karkat get his way entirely, but he does back off. Hugs aren't as fun when the other side of the hug is a prickly ex-troll who prefers insults to actual friendly greetings.]

Geez, Dave, who knew you'd be so popular in Pokemon land? And a baseball stadium? Do the Pokemon play baseball?

[He looks to his new tiny bird friend.]

I feel like a lot of them wouldn't be able to hold a bat.

Excuse you, why wouldn't I be popular in Pokémon land. My appeal is both universal and unstoppable. You should see what happens when I walk to work, maidens gotta have their tank fighters out in force when I pass by on the street in case they faint from proximity to a legend.

[Wart's gone off to hang out on the sidelines, but he can't help but put his head in his hand. Why couldn't Dave return him to the Pokéball before he started talking. Why must he suffer in this way.]

Also, that's a baseball stadium? I thought it might be, like. A basketball field.

[Yeah no. Wart puts his head in both hands. Even the Pokémon know more about sports than you, Dave.]

[FREEDOM except that now Karkat doesn't know what to do with himself, exactly. Getting out of hug range is the obvious first move, but then... uhh. Yeah. Goddammit, why couldn't Kanaya or Terezi turned up with the rest of the newcomers?

Mouthing "tank fighters?" to himself, he shakes his head and goes to join poor Wart. He feels your pain, Pokébro. Brokémon? Holy fuck, he's spending too much time around Dave.]

Don't be stupid, of course the Pokémon don't play baseball. Or basketball.

[What even are those. No, wait, he doesn't care. Phew, glad they cleared that up.]

Noooo, people play it! I guess some Pokemon could play if they wanted to? But many would not be able to do it very effectively.

[She's not going to even touch the basketball commentary going on here. Even she can tell the difference between the two types of stadiums, goodness gracious.]

Whatever--it does not matter! We need to get John settled in first before we can do all the fun stuff like watching balls and introducing him to friends.

Look, we are in a Pokemon world, so I am going to assume that there are Pokemon versions of all normal earth things until further notice.

[It's the only reasonable thing to do, really.]

Anyways, I've been meaning to ask this, but where are we right now? I know Dave said Goldenpod Town or something like that but... is this a house? Do you guys live here?

Please, like we'd settle like a farmers reaching the New World in the times we needed the Louisiana Purchase peopled, before the U.S. had immigration laws. No, what do you take us for.

[Dave reclaims the seat he supposedly--SUPPOSEDLY--fell out of.]

This is a hotel. We get housekeeping service.

And it's "Goldenrod City," not whatever the fuck you just said.

[Because that's clearly an important thing to establish, somehow. Just... yeeeaahhhh, this sure is a fuckload of human things people are talking about. He's used to it by now, or should be, but that doesn't quite change the fact that he's keenly aware he's the only troll in the respiteblock at the moment. And Dave's sitting in his fucking chair and asldkfgfdgj for fuck's sake, Karkat, let it go already.]

Penny and the others are in the adjacent rooms. We'll get you set up in one, too, unless you want to double with Jade or something?

[Human siblings shared rooms sometimes, right? How the fuck does this work again, he should have paid more attention.]

I don't think he would want to, considering he's been on a ship with me for the past three years.

[Karkat you know, she's told you about the shitbaby tantrums. Jade is not about to stir up that cauldron again, even if she is a witch.]

We are not finished with our journey around this land either, so it's not time to settle in a farmhouse and spend the rest of our days tending to cattlemons and such.

Uh, yeah, no offense to Jade, but it'd be kind of weird sharing a room. Not that you're not awesome, Jade! But it'd probably be best to get my own space.

[A pause, and suddenly he's rummaging in his backpack. He pulls out a wallet and waves it around a bit.]

Though how much does this place cost? Because I've got some Pokedollars, but I don't know how much this is? Can I afford to stay here?

Nope.

[Helpful as ever. He tips his chair back again, because some people don't learn lessons the first time around.]

Get a job.

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now that i've had more time to think about it

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