Shine bright, shine far, be a star, or a moon, or a sun, or a planet, or whatever celestial body you would like to be!

Oh, man! It's been so long. Thank goodness the entire roleplay is faithfully preserved on deviantART, so when I actually feel like writing again I can do it!

First of all, a very important message: please go back and reread this fanfiction! I've fixed it up on account of my dissatisfaction with my writing and spelling and grammar, so it's better and everything is conveyed in a way that better suits what I've been trying to go for with each chapter.

Of course, you don't have to, since I know it's crazy long and could probably knock a man out with its wordiness. But I would greatly appreciate it. Not to mention, it's a great way to review on just what's been going on!

And second of all, thank you all so much for bearing with me and my indecisiveness and utter laziness. My future chapters will all be wonderful because I am not only making them for you, but also for myself. I feel I have progressed as a writer just by writing this monster of a fanfiction. 40,000+ words, and it's only the second day fanfiction-wise!

Third of all, regarding the use of slang: I don't want this to be a fanfiction that is painfully difficult for me to write (and hence difficult to read without getting bored), but I don't want this to be outright "are you fucking sure this is in the Renaissance", so I've compromised. I've always written it in such a way that the slang concepts would be understandable for Renaissance people without overexplaining. This means no electronics or distinct non-European cultural influences, since this takes place in an England-like country, but this does mean plenty of "guy" and "crap" and "fucking glorious love ballads", which were popular at the time since suddenly the whole European world realized that secular music can, in fact, be a thing.

So, without further ado, the fanfiction!

Disclaimer dishmaimer.

John just couldn't let Karkat have his way with the whole conversation. He was not going to encourage violence in the Egbert family.

"You better not dislocate my best friend's jaw. He needs it to spew all his Southern crap from," John said sternly. He even went so far as to think about shaking his index finger in Karkat's direction, but quickly came to the conclusion that Karkat would bite it off.

"Oh god! That guy again. The one we're going to see in literally less than an hour! And what's this about Southern crap? Don't tell me he's another troll," Karkat groaned, putting his head into his hands.

Karkat didn't think he could handle meeting someone else like Kanaya. She was probably only allowed to work for him because she's some normal-blood troll with human friends. Karkat was a mutant, the lowest of the low, one who made the grave mistake of existing.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

"He's not a troll! He's just from some weird down-South portion of Derse where it's really hot and everyone wears dark eyewear."

"Well, fuck. I don't know any portion of Derse like that." Karkat shifted his gaze towards the path in front of him, making sure to kick any nearby pebbles. "Then again, I've mostly been in Prospit, dealing with idiots like you."

John stopped in his place. He frowned and crinkled his eyebrows together in response, making sure to exaggerate the crinkling of his chin for comedic effect.

"Karkaaaaat! I thought you were going to be pleasant and agreeable and nice!"

Karkat rolled his eyes, stopping only moments after John did. He was only vaguely aware of the nature of the words coming out of his employer's mouth; he was more focused on not breaking out into a self-hating fit because of them.

Some joke that is, you idiot.

"Maybe later, dipshit," the urchin said, stopping. He turned his hood-covered eyes towards John and sighed. "No, don't look at me like that, Mr. Egbert, I promise that I'll behave my filthy, unwashed, money-grabbing self in front of the nice young man with the swords! Now wipe off that stupid fucking baby animal pout already, you're making me physically sick with that face of yours."

The urchin's final statement was punctuated with a dismissing wave. He turned his head away from John and started walking again.

(Okay, maybe Karkat wasn't very good at controlling himself sometimes. He still tried.)

John mussed up his own hair, out of habit, and frowned for real this time. A pause. "Oh, come on, that's totally not what I meant by that! It was just a little joke!"

"Sure it isn't," Karkat said, dropping his head down so that John couldn't see his face. He said he'd behave for the useless, weak human with legal authority over him, so he'd better go through with it, instead of flapping his scrawny arms about like a cluckbeast with its head cut off.

"It really isn't! I was just making fun of how you call me an idiot all the time!" John began to run, seeing as Karkat would not wait up on him!

"Naturally," the urchin said into his robe, which was slightly blowing into his face.

"Hey!"

"Mm."

"Karkat!"

"Egbert." Karkat sounded tired, like interacting with John was a drain on his energy.

"Geez, lighten up, you sound like you're being squeezed to death in a printing press."

"Is that an order, master?"

What Karkat had really wanted to say was, John, you fucking asshole, I probably would wind up getting squeezed to death in a printing press, but he knew that he couldn't. Not until he was certain that John'd be okay with having a troll living next to his room and making him breakfast every morning for at least two months and calling him out on how he put his socks on the wrong fucking feet.

See, Kanaya kept to herself, but Karkat didn't, like the idiot he was. John only interacted with Kanaya if he had to, and well, he went out of his way to pester Karkat, because he didn't know better.

The urchin had to spare him. John'd probably be disgusted with himself if he knew he'd tried to play friends with a troll instead of just having one work for him on the cheap. He'd tolerate the latter, not the former. There were people like that. He'd worked for them before.

(Still, Karkat liked pretending that John liked him as a person enough to dispense with formalities, even if he did assume Karkat was human, even if he did assume Karkat wasn't some disgusting thief off the streets, even if he didn't realize that human or not, Karkat was a taintchafing nooksucker in a dirty robe. He was troll enough to admit it.)

(But that's all it was. A game of pretend. The furbeast not realizing it should be eating the squeakbeast, and instead dangling it from its carefully trimmed claws.)

"Ew, don't say stuff like that," John said, deciding to dismiss the whole ordeal in the end. Karkat only fiddled with his hood in response. "And anyway, what was that about a stupid baby animal pout? Because I don't have that, you're greatly mistaken and also fuck you."

A moment of silence. John could not tell if Karkat was going to reply or not; he could not see Karkat's facial expression underneath his hood. But it seemed like Karkat really was upset - over what, John didn't know - and he might not even dare to speak up.

John was wrong.

"So, you're not that poor sap with the idiotic thing you do when you stick out your bottom lip? You're not the sorry ass whose fucking bottom lip transcends all degrees of pathetic little mewling infantile pitifulness? There's no such individual as that?"

"Exactly!" The blue boy almost breathed a sigh of relief. "See, I'm full of mangrit, Karkat. Men like us don't mewl!"

Karkat glared at John, though the human twit couldn't see him due to the hood obscuring all. Really, it was more of a symbolic thing, akin to thinking, fuck you, John Egbert, at full volume.

"Oh ho ho, so that's how you are! You don't stand there, staring at me like a street youth with a missing leg, all 'please sir could you spare some kindness for a poor young boy' until my agonized bulge drives itself up the fragile skin of my crotch, where it fucking cuddles up against my internal organs until you decide to have mercy and let up on my poor tortured being. Because you clearly have some fictitious unit of stupid gender-related pride called mangrit that absolutely nullifies any of your disgusting, pitiful goddamn stupid baby animal tendencies!"

"Haha, Karkat, you're so gross." John had tuned out most of what Karkat was saying; all he gathered from his employee's response was that the visuals were terrifying and could probably soon be applied to himself.

"Oh, no, Egbert. You haven't even seen gross. You don't know what it's like to be me, when my shame globes have retreated into my tragic nardcocoon of a body, going into hiding from that disgusting twitch of your extended lower lip, and I can't coax them back out no matter how many goddamn apology cookies I wave behind their backs."

"Karkat!"

(What John really wanted to ask was why the apology cookies, but he was starting to get the idea that it was futile to question Karkat's convoluted metaphors.)

"You see, when the pain is so encumbering that my legs are rendered useless, it becomes very goddamn difficult to wax poetic about flowers or philosophize about...human nature. So I tried singing some fucking glorious love ballads to them after I tried the cakediscs, because I'm such a wanton thinker at heart. However, it seems they only come back to the outside world when there's no outside threat from your kicked-puppy face. I think they're scared, Egbert! You get that pout on your face one more time, they might end up pushing into my gut!"

"And, what? Your gut'll have something to say about that?"

"A badge of honor for the moron, on account of his spectacular motherfucking gut-related inferences." Karkat scoffed, finding it very hard not to grin this time. Even if the grin was directed at glee over John's eager stupidity.

"Oh, well, thank you, so much, I'd just like to thank my family, and the commission, and…"

"Oh my god, you're literally the biggest moron to ever fall into the hay pile," Karkat interrupted. "How the hell did you survive as an infant?"

"Rude!"

As the duo babbled on, in front of an empty blacksmith's shop, windows glowing with the stoked fires of the forge, streets paved with still more cobblestone, the all-knowing coolkid had been waiting for a very long time.

There was no doubt in this guy's mind that he wasn't exactly fond of this situation, and obviously he had an idea of what better things he could be doing. Things that weren't his job or anything relating to it. Things more dork-oriented.

Not that anybody around would really know. He was so dutifully hammering his metal into shape on top of his anvil that passersby simply assumed metal-pounding was his intention.

Sparks flew into the air. The boy mopped some sweat off his brow as he worked.

The sun was roasting him alive.

Fortunately for John, he was prepared to wait as long as needed. When John was late, he was probably bringing along some sort of awesome surprise. Like a mug of apple juice. Or some cheese bread. It was just that kind of friendship; one man bribed with delicious baked goods and beverages, and one man bribing.

Of course, the whole relationship wasn't based on that, but it didn't hurt the success of it any.

The coolkid paused for a second. Amid the clangs and the thuds, the boy had just heard the excited squeaking of his best friend, and something that sounded as unpleasant as an unobtanium sword being scraped on Roman concrete, except it came in different pitches and in a different octave.

It was speech. John was talking out loud, and was he putting on some sort of voice? The swordsman put away his hammer in preparation, and straightened out his worn out breeches.

Would you look at that, the man of the hour's here, dutifully shaming the Egbert family name just by turning up like an eccentric douchebag.

Not that the coolkid really cared, Egbert could do with a bit of rebellion every now and then. But hey. Egbert could also do with some homestyle teasing.

The, the blond made the mistake of leaning over, squinting through his dimming eyewear for a better view. Almost immediately, he leaned backwards, in disbelief from what he saw.

This can't be right, he thought. He wiped the end of his shirt against his glasses and went right back to staring. John, you colossal ham, what did you get yourself into this time?

The new guy dressed like he'd tried to make a robe out of a goddamn sack of potatoes. He was so short, compared to John, that he might as well have been a sack of potatoes, reincarnated (if you believe the pagan stuff). Sack Of Potatoes also seemed to have a hood covering his face. The covering-his-face aspect, the coolkid could respect, but the fucking hood just looked so stupid and uncool that he couldn't even handle it.

He couldn't hold in his amusement, all he could think of was this guy and his fucking outfit.

"Who's your new boyfriend, Egbert?" he called out, stomping the bottoms of his shoes on the ground as he chortled.

Karkat suddenly stopped and clenched his fists. He couldn't be too sure, but he seemed to have overheard the mating call of a perfect specimen of Dersite douchebag.

Fuck you, John's little friend. I am nothing of the sort.

"None of your fucking business, asschump," Karkat said out loud, at the same time that John squealed, "Ew! You know I'm not like that!"

"Oh, come on. You know you are like that, I know you wanna sample the goods every now and then. Well, sorry, Eggs, this baby's off the market until further notice. Good thing you've got Shortcake o'er here to make an honest man out of you."

"Ewww! I thought this was a good Christian country!"

"Not to fucking mention that I mugged the sorry excuse for a nook," the urchin hissed to himself, careful not to let the new guy overhear his words.

The coolkid suddenly went quiet.

Evidently, Karkat had not been as quiet as he thought.

John's face took on a stricken look, as though he'd just realized he'd left something important at his house. His eyes darted about, carefully scanning Karkat and rapidly moving on to the blond in shades, then repeating in a frenzied anxiety loop.

Within mere moments, the air had grown thick and still with sudden tension.

"Oh, uh, bad idea to say that little…out loud…it's just a joke, that's a-" John blustered, shoe grinding at the Roman-style concrete a little bit, trying to salvage the situation, oh god why wo-

"Mugging?" The blond suddenly appeared in front of Karkat, only to lean on the (horribly diminutive) individual's head with his elbow. He threw the employee a cold look before turning back to John.

The blue boy gulped.

The urchin snarled.

"Haha, d-dude, that's actually a funny sto-"

"Mmhm."

"It all started when I was lost i-"

"Nah, bro. Sorry to hafta shut you up here, but I wanna hear it from him." The blond condescendingly patted Karkat's head.

Karkat slapped the cooldouche's arm off, snarling threateningly. Cooldouche kept his face absolutely still, certain not to let the robed twerp get any emotional response out of him. The two of them had turned their heads toward each other, trying to intimidate the other, while the employee kept his snarl going for as long as he could.

Finally, Karkat gave in and inhaled his needed air, but to compensate, he decided to speak up.

"Well. What can I say? Mugging. Oh golly gee, do I love mugging! See, just yesterday, in the middle of the afternoon, I got out my nasty little mugging claws and dug into twerp-ass's wallet like the greedy piece of shit that I am. And now, seeing as I am here and my hunger for gold is never satisfied, I will also mug everyone in the surrounding goddamn area, because I am just an unstoppable, depraved kleptomaniac and I simply cannot control myself around people who are richer than I am. Better keep that wallet of yours hidden, hotshot! I eat leather money bags like yours for breakfast!"

The quip was punctuated with a sneer, intended to express irritation at the cooldouche's self-assured yet barely-founded judgements.

Cooldouche raised an eyebrow. Clearly, this was not the response he was looking for.

"Yeah, okay," Cooldouche deadpanned, bringing out a dirk that was hidden in his boots. Instead of thrusting or even getting it into position, he twirled the blade around his fingers, head turned toward Karkat. "I don't want to hear that horseshit. Just fucking do it. I dare you to lay even a single finger on a Strider."

"Oh, good lord no," Karkat hissed, threatening to spit at the blond. "I wouldn't want to give you the sensation of being touched by someone for the first time in years!"

"Both of you, shut up, oh my god!"

John had heard enough of this weird and…frankly disturbing conversation. Already it hadn't went too well with Kanaya, and he was pretty sure that the whole ordeal with Rose was just awkward. He was not going to let another meeting go wrong!

"John, du-" An incredibly uncool outburst from the blond.

"Strider, you'd better put that sword back where it came from!"

"Bu-"

"I'm serious!"

Strider looked over at John and outright frowned. He was evidently very, very unhappy.

"For fuck's sake, Egbert. Bros don't let bros get robbed by…whatever you call potato sack muggers with legs." The blond bent over to put his dagger back into his boots, but this didn't stop him from moving his arms about and gesticulating.

Karkat had to mutter creative swears under his breath to keep himself from clawing the blond's face off.

"You saw it yourself, he's not actually going to mug anyone." John raised his arms in a questioning sort of gesture, as though he were confused by the very nature of his friend's bias.

"He mugged you." The coolkid stood up as he said this, defensively crossing his arms in reply.

"And maybe there's a reason why I'm here in the same general area as him right now?"

"Lack of common sense?"

John's lips went flat.

"Okay, look at this, Egbert, do you even know what that reason is? This lil' bitch is someone who thought it'd be cool to jump you in an alley and empty your wallet for you, like a cleaning service run by pickpocketing little boys. If anything, he's supposed to be rotting in a dungeon far away from yo-"

Karkat felt an uncontrollable flash of anger at the very mention of a dungeon. "You shut your fucking mouth, you brainless piece of shit!"

"Karkat!" John butted in just as Strider turned his head towards the noise, leaving a flustered and angry urchin blathering, trying not to sound defensive but failing. The blue boy cleared his throat and began again, more vigorously than before.

"If you'll actually trust me on this, I was going to tell you that the reason he's here is that I thought that it'd be a bad idea to put him in a dungeon!" John turned his head towards Strider, but gestured towards Karkat. "Have you even seen the way his robe hangs off of him? He'd probably die if I let him end up there. He even said so himself that he didn't have a decent meal in weeks! I mean, it's indirect murder, sending a guy like him to a dungeon. I don't want to be responsible for killing anyone."

Karkat immediately shut up.

Of course he doesn't actually like you, stupid. It's just because you're a defenseless shit smear on society's window, steadily being scraped off by some unwitting servant, and Egbert felt bad for the goddamn shit smear.

It was only stupid human pity.

Strider was not convinced by John's little monologue. He was still analyzing Sack O' Potatoes and his grayish pallor and the faint glimpse of his chicken legs.

He turned his head back to John.

"So, what? You're going to ignore that this guy's capital-grade criminal and treat him like your new best friend for life? Make friendship bracelets with him? Fucking skip through a spring meadow together like a pair of gleeful nitwits? He's a criminal. He's illegal. He's probably figuring out ways to jump you and escape into the motherfucking sunset right about now."

"Are you kidding me? Do you really think that's how I am with anyone I bring over to meet you? Or are you jealous?"

"Hell no." Strider gave John a sort of reproving look, which was only discernible due to the placement of his eyebrows. John shrugged in response, evidently not having been serious about the jealousy bit.

"Well, shit, what do you want me to say? Rose likes him, apparently he saved her back when she was really young. Kanaya can put up with him. He can actually be kinda funny sometimes. Really, he's not that bad. I'd like for you to be able to say the same."

The blond sighed. Karkat held his head in a singular hand, punching his temple with the other; he was currently incapable of dealing with the asinine horseshit that John was spewing, yet incapable of bringing himself to butt in.

"No matter how nice he used to be in the good ol' days, you should pardon me if I'm not exactly open to the new and improved goddamn angel on our hands." Strider closed his eyes and adjusted his shades, clearly not capable of accepting John's optimism.

"It was out of necessity! I've personally got no hard feelings."

No response.

"Well, whatever. If you get your head out of your ass, you'll see." John said after a few seconds, addressing his statement to the blond. He gave a concerned glance towards Karkat, who had his arms crossed and was glaring at his feet. "Could you please at least introduce yourselves? You don't even have to shake hands."

Strider looked towards John and sighed. He turned his head back towards the employee. His upper lip twitched. He was evidently less pleased about John's new employee than he let on.

"Don't ever wanna see him 'round here 'gain. Why the fuck'd I wanna play friends with this shitheap?" More gesticulation. More irritation.

"I can stop bringing apple juice around here, coolkid. But, you know, maybe, you're just too cool to associate with types like Karkat, and you're too cool for apple juice…"

Suddenly, the coolkid straightened, as if he had suddenly seen the entire situation in a brand new light.

"Hell no, Striders're all about taking things in stride. Acceptance and shit. And apple juice, Egbert, you little shit, you know me too well, I need to get a new best friend who won't play dirty like that."

Egbert only pointed his arms towards Karkat, palms outward, as if presenting him as a new gift.

A pause.

The blond hesitated a bit before speaking up. He was clearly not open to acceptance when it involved some grey twerp running around in burlap-like robes. Maybe he didn't want to take to talking to stealing hooded thugs. Maybe he just wanted to be a reasonable goddamn person and keep away from those kids Mama told you about.

But then he remembered. Lives were at stake here.

He was not doing this for John.
He was doing this for the Earthly golden ichor of the gods they called apple juice.

"Okay. Let's get this over with. Name's Dave Strider. I work with metal."

Karkat grimaced. Throughout the whole ordeal, he evidently did not want to speak to anyone. In fact, he kinda wanted to get the fuck out of there, only the fact that none of the streets nearby were grimy enough for him to slip away into was keeping him in check. Dave was halfway right with his biased assumptions.

"Karkat Vantas," he spat, trying to force the words out of his mouth. "Fuck you, Dave Strider."

"Idem pour vous, dickwad," Dave replied, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. "God, is Jarbat always this big a pain in the ass?"

"Dave!" A snarl from Karkat followed, but this was ignored by both humans.

"I get to keep my apple juice, dude, I did the whole fucking deal."

John scrunched his face up at Dave. "Now I know what Rose means when she calls you an insufferable prick. That is you, Dave. It's your god-given middle name. Dave 'Insufferable Prick' Strider."

"Wouldn't have been able t'live any other way," Dave "Insufferable Prick" Strider says, smirking like he knows something John doesn't.

Of course, that smirk is nothing more than a bluff.

"So, now what?" Kanaya said. It had just been a moment of silence that lasted a few minutes. Perhaps, neither Rose nor Kanaya should've been so blunt about their assumptions; they could have easily skirted about their thoughts and feelings for an hour or so, and killed some time that way. "How do you feel?"

Rose was looking fairly stiff, as though it were difficult for her to speak. She was no stranger to therapeutic tentacles, but she was a stranger to being on the receiving end of them.

"Honestly, I'm not sure. I'm now starting to have my fair share of uncertainty regarding Karkat's species."

The human looked towards the troll for a moment before she began again.

"After all, our inferences are only founded on evidence suggesting that he is of your nature. We could very well be wrong. And though I could also be wrong even now, it's just that - excuse me, I regret to stereotype your kind, Kanaya - many trolls are none too fond of us, so it makes little sense for a troll, one without any cause to think otherwise of humans, to save one."

"Now is not the time for doubt, Rose," the troll girl reminded her girlfriend, as she unlocked the door to the Alternian portion of the library. "Though I am no analyst compared to you, I would say that you have some quality troll intuition to reckon with before you overthink this." Kanaya smiled. "Humans like you do not make those sorts of mistakes when they speak."

"Perhaps you are right," Rose sighed, following Kanaya into the secret room. "But still, what will bother me until I see Karkat again is this: why would he save a human, if he has no reason to want to?"

"There could be many reasons." Kanaya closed the door and locked it back up. Then, she sat down on a chair, cushioned with velvet, adjusting her gown to stop any wrinkles from forming.

A pat of the chair next to hers, an invite for Rose to sit.

"He may, shockingly enough, actually have good experiences with humans that he remembers. These experiences might have driven him to help both you and John."

"Karkat Vantas, a creature of sentiment? It seems unlikely."

"You are forgetting something very important, Rose. Something that you, yourself pointed out."

Rose sat down to think for a moment. Kanaya smiled, gleefully letting her fangs show.

"Do you mean how submissive toward John he was when we left? It did shock me as something unusual, because he was asserting his dominance on us so often, as if he didn't want us to have the upper hand." The blonde thought a little more. "Looking over that now, it seems more like an urge to appease the dominant party, in order to fulfill his then-hope of escape. He may have just accepted his fate as a servant."

"Oh, well, yes, that sounds reasonable," the troll said, flustering a little bit. "Well, then, if not sentiment, then maybe he was just a very good person."

Rose did not feel comfortable trying to deny Kanaya's claim. She went even more stiff.

"Or perhaps, he had a particular vendetta against those thugs of yours! Yes, that's a very reasonable cause!" The troll girl looked very proud of herself; she was glad to be in charge, for once.

Rose looked almost ashamed to speak. "You are correct in saying that the cause is reasonable, but it does not explain John's encounter, or, to be more specific, why Mr. Vantas couldn't properly…mug, at the time."

"Oh. Then it seems that there is more to our little friend here than horns," Kanaya said, slightly disappointed but not upset.

"And we bring up one of the questions I'd been asking myself back when I was still trying to recall how Karkat was familiar to me. Who exactly did John bring home?"

"Who, indeed." Kanaya nudged a little at her horns, more confused than she'd been a few minutes ago.

A sigh from Rose.

"Don't ask me, Kanaya. For once, I think I've been hit with a very, very challenging case."

Ready to put the conversation behind her, she picked up the rebellious Complacency of The Learned and began reading. Kanaya, not wanting to be left out, scooched her chair closer and leaned onto her girlfriend.

"Still, there has to be something," Rose muttered. Kanaya only smoothed her girlfriend's hair and nodded, giving her a reassuring peck on the cheek, being very careful about her teeth in contrast to before.

Rose was so distracted, she forgot to wipe off Kanaya's lipstick.