Karkat Vantas had long since learned that the universe would seize any opportunity to take a huge cosmic dump on him, but what he hadn't expected was for the universe to get clever, and come up with new ways in which to make him serve as its galactic load gaper. If he'd examined his life closer and seen the escalating pattern of shit he regularly had to swim through, he might have suspected this, but unfortunately, he was a bit more worried about dying in a fire at the time.

A literal fire, not a metaphorical one, though Karkat was perfectly able to come up with some sort of complex allegorical interpretation of his life that revolved around agonizingly dying in a fire.

One of the neighboring hives was alight with orange flames, half its roof already collapsed. Karkat took a moment to wonder how he hadn't noticed the fire sooner, then took three whole minutes to repeat "ohshitohshitohshitohshit" in his mind.

The hives were not terribly close together, but it was the dry season and the dead grass between lawnrings could prove to be a serious safety hazard. At least there was no wind that night, so no embers could be spread by it, but Karkat was not the type who hoped for—or expected—the best. His hive catching fire would just be the latest low note in the scatological symphony the universe was playing as the soundtrack to his life.

When his brief panic-induced paralysis passed, he ran downstairs, where his lusus usually lurked. The crab was not there, and Karkat mentally slapped himself. The crab had away somewhere for several day. And what was a large semi-aquatic creature going to do about a fire? As comforting as the thought of his lusus defending him against everything was, some scenarios were less realistic than others.

So he went outside. His neighbors had taken note of the fire as well, and one intrepid yellow-blooded girl was in the process of dousing her hive with water, aided by a gardening hose and her large insectile lusus. This struck Karkat as a particularly good idea, but then again, her hive was closer to the fire than his, and she had help.

The fire did not seem to be spreading, at least. While nobody was inclined to go and help put it out, it seemed to have run its course and was guttering out by itself. Karkat paced around his lawnring for some time, wondering what had happened to the hive's inhabitant. It had been some brown-blood, as far as he could remember. He'd never talked to the boy, who was maybe two sweeps older and even crankier than Karkat, but he still wondered what had caused this. Was it an accident? Was it arson? A caliginous flirtation gone terribly wrong?

The yellow-blood stopped splashing the side of her hive with water and stood looking at the flame-ravaged hive as well. Slowly, she turned to look at Karkat, a suspicious glint in her eyes. Karkat bristled when he realized she suspected him of starting the fire and bared his teeth in response. She stood staring at him for a few moments longer—considering, perhaps, what blood color the gray symbol was hiding—before she decided it was not worth it and looked away.

But now Karkat was wondering as well. Had someone started the fire on purpose? Would they be back to start a new one?

He wished his lusus was back home.

The next night, as the remaining half of the burnt-out hive cooled, Karkat observed his neighbors going out and poking through the ruins, scavenging for anything useful or interesting which might have been spared. Judging by the brief time they all spent doing so, Karkat had to guess pickings were slim. He had no intention of going out there himself. Nothing he could find at the destroyed hive could be worth potentially running into one of the neighbors he so diligently avoided, and the whole place looked like a death trap, anyway.

It would not be terribly far in the future, however, that he would kick himself for not going to rummage through the remains himself, because, after careful consideration of the timeline involved, doing so would have saved him the horrifying events which ensued that night.

The unfortunate string of misfortune started when someone frantically started knocking on the door—though "knocking" was perhaps a tame descriptor for the action. From the sounds of it, someone was putting their whole body into it, fists and horns and feet and possibly a shoulder or two. Karkat was taken aback by this enough that he actually ran downstairs to answer (though fortunately, he was not rendered stupid enough by the surprise to forget his sickle).

He opened the door ready to meet (and half expecting) an entire threshecutioner squad. Instead, a lanky troll drenched in his own brown blood fell to the ground, his breathing labored and his wide eyes swiveling in fear as he looked behind him, then back at Karkat.

"...please," the troll croaked, and he fell to the ground that very moment with the last, heaving breath he would ever give.

Karkat stared down at the bloodied troll, frozen in equal parts shock and terror. He recognized his neighbor, whose hive had burned down the night before. His neighbor who seemed to be thoughtlessly bleeding into his carpet at the moment.

'Close the door,' a small part of Karkat's mind yelled at him. 'Close the fucking door before whoever was after him comes and strangles you with your own bowels, you shit-panned idiot!'

The remaining parts of Karkat were just a hair slower to catch up, however, and he could only look up when he finally noticed the dark shadow looming in his doorway.

Too slow, too stupid, too fucking cursed. Karkat could come up with a thousand reasons why this was happening to him right now, but whatever the reason, it always came back to his personal deficiencies somehow.

"Evenin', motherfucker," the lanky troll in the doorway greeted him.

He smiled slowly and stepped into Karkat's hive as if he owned the place, and that was no wonder, because the sign on his black T-shirt was indigo.

Karkat let out a strangled gasp and stepped back, clutching his sickle in front of him with shaking hands. The tall troll smirked at this, completely unalarmed. He had his own weapon, a juggling club splattered with brown blood, but he did not brandish it; he kept it casually perched against his shoulder with one hand, while his other hand was in a pocket. The pocket of a pair of awful black and indigo clown pants, which seemed to be a theme with this guy. His face was painted, mostly white, but with jagged gray around his eyes and mouth, giving him sharp edges where his face should have only soft planes. Even his horns were ridiculously long and intimidating, so much so that he'd had to lower his head to fit through the door.

Karkat was going to be bludgeoned to death by a psychotic clown. Of course he was. At no point did his life indicate it would end in anything less than a violent and utterly humiliating fashion.

"Now, you ain't gonna MOTHERFUCKING DISRESPECT ME like this motherfucker here did, ARE YOU?" the clown asked, still smiling in what probably qualified as a 'good-natured' manner by his standards. The gray paint around his mouth gave the illusion of fangs occupying the entire lower half of his face, like a bestial maw ready to devour naughty little trolls.

When the manic clown yelled, his voice hit just the right frequency to wash Karkat with terror. He wondered if that was an indigo thing, or just a rampaging serial killer thing. Probably it was both.

Karkat whimpered and dropped the sickle. No. There was no way he was going to fight his way out of this one. He hardly came up to the clown's neck, and he had no real idea how to use the damn sickle. He was not naïve enough to believe that prancing through his respiteblock playing at being a threshecutioner had imbued him with the fighting skills necessary to ward off a murderous mini-subjugglator.

"That's more LIKE IT, MOTHERFUCKER," the other troll said, as a look of satisfaction spread over his face.

"Now kneel," he said, his voice almost a whisper.

Karkat gaped, the words almost not making their way through to his think-pan.

"You deaf, motherfucker? I SAID KNEEL."

Karkat dropped the the floor like a stone and commenced to study his own carpet intensely. He'd tracked blood, he noticed; a brown stain shaped like the bottom of his shoe was right in front of him, taunting him with his impending demise.

"See? Ain't hard. COULD HAVE TAUGHT THAT DEAD MOTHERFUCKER a thing or two about respect." He punctuated this remark with a kick to the brown-blood's corpse.

Karkat's hands tightened into fists as he tried desperately to stay as still as possible. This was hindered somewhat by the fact that he was shaking in fear at the moment. Where was his lusus? Where was the damn crab when he needed it? Where, where, where...?

"NOW LOOK AT ME, MOTHERFUCKER."

Karkat flinched and looked up. The clown was looming over him, staring down with a mildly peeved expression on his face, which on anybody else would have qualified as murderously enraged, at the very least.

"Why the fuck is your sign gray? YOU HIDING SOMETHING, MOTHERFUCKER? Or is your blood gray? IS THAT IT? You some piece of shit gray-blooded mutant?"

Karkat flinched violently, falling back on his hands and scuttling away as quickly as possible. He shook his head in denial, though there was tragically little to deny. He was. He was a piece of shit mutant, and this psycho was going to find out and bash his face in for it. Thus end the inglorious chronicles of Karkat Vantas, waste of fucking space.

"Where you goin'? DID I SAY YOU COULD MOTHERFUCKING GO ANYWHERE?"

In one step, the clown was upon Karkat. He grabbed the smaller troll by the collar and easily lifted him to his feet. The bloodied club disappeared to his sylladex, but that was little relief when his claw came up and slashed open Karkat's cheek.

Whatever Karkat felt before and foolishly thought was terror was now replaced with something even more potent, overwhelming to the point of numbness. Six sweeps of carefully keeping this secret, of studiously avoiding any opportunity for injury, or emotional extreme, or perilous social contact of any kind, and it was all rendered pointless in this one short instance—all because he had to answer the fucking door, like a complete tool.

His eyes screwed shut, so tightly it was beginning to be painful. The clown touched his fingers to the blood, and even if he couldn't see it, Karkat could just feel him turning his fingers to the light, studying the mutant candy red substance.

The knowledge that this day was going to come sooner or later was little comfort.

But the club Karkat expected to come crashing on him at any moment never arrived.

"...Motherfucking miracles," the clown troll whispered, barely audible, and Karkat hazarded to open his eyes. "You've got MOTHERFUCKING MIRACLES RUNNING THROUGH YOUR VEINS."

Karkat flinched, and his ears started ringing. Being so close when the clown yelled seemed hazardous to his health all by itsself.

The troll was transfixed by Karkat's blood, rubbing it between his fingers with a rapt expression. This was a far cry from the disgust and anger he had always expected when he'd imagined this situation.

Karkat took a long look at his own blood, almost convinced he was missing something, but the sticky coagulating mess on the clown's fingers remained bright red.

The clown turned his head to look at Karkat suddenly, and the smaller troll shrank back. But the clown was smiling, rows of sharp teeth on display.

"Hope you ain't got plans for the rest of the night, bro," he said, his voice low and cheerful in a way that was perhaps more frightening than when he was yelling.

Gamzee Makara's week was turning around, he decided.

True, it hadn't started very well. He woke up on the first day in a wretched mood. His lusus had been gone for a few perigees, and his art project was stalling, and that was when he'd gone down to the beach to clear his head and keep and eye out for the old goat.

He wandered up and down the coastline, but the beach was deserted for miles and the ocean was just as still. Once in awhile he could see the dark shape of a seadweller or some other sort of aquatic creature darting under the water, but the old goat was still elusive.

Tired and cranky, Gamzee finally reached the end of the beach, where sand turned to rocky outcroppings, and he sat down on a reasonably flat boulder to drink a Faygo and revel in his own misery. He must have been sitting there for a few hours when he noticed that it was getting late. At least, he assumed it had been a few hours, because his ass was numb and the horizon was starting to get the milky-white tint of dawn.

There was no way he was getting back to his hive in time, so Gamzee decided to look for alternate shelter. Sleeping without sopor would not be pleasant, but neither would being caught in the blinding Alternian sun.

At first, he considered finding a cave of some sort. The rocky shore had to have one or two within walking distance. But he changed his mind when he saw the troll boy perched on the shore, fishing.

Oh, yes, Gamzee decided. This was a much better idea, he thought.

He thought wrong.

In retrospect, the brown-blooded bastard turned out to be more trouble than he was worth (and really, what kind of suicidal idiot uses flamethrowerkind? That was just a recipe for disaster right there). He didn't even have an interesting enough blood color to be included in Gamzee's art project, and the clown was just about ready to write the whole thing off as a wash, except the low-blooded maggot did one good thing before he croaked, and that was to lead Gamzee to the troll with the miracle blood.

This. This bright-eye-searing-candy-red was just what he'd needed to get over his artist's block. This was going to tie everything together. Divine inspiration, straight from the Mirthful Messiahs. And Gamzee had no doubt this was a sign. How could such a blood color be permitted to exist, except as a miracle, as a special gift, just for Gamzee?

And special gifts should not be wasted, so he stomped down his initial impulse to cut the troll open from belly to neck and squeeze every last drop out of him. He was going to motherfucking cherish this miracle.

So Gamzee released his grip on the troll's collar, and he swayed on his feet, looking ready to fall over. The clown grinned and threw an arm over his shoulders, pulling him close in a way that would have been amicable, save for the claws carefully pressed against his bicep, drawing tiny pinpricks of blood even through the shirt. The red-blooded troll was terrified, but Gamzee ignored it. Terror was always a lowblood's proper response in front of one so vastly his superior.

"We goin' for a stroll now. YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT?" he asked.

The troll shrank back and shook his head minutely, but he also raised a hand to his face and pressed a sleeve against the cut on his cheek. He did not want to go with Gamzee, did not want to have his blood displayed for all to see, but he did not fight back, either.

"Nah, didn't think so," Gamzee murmured, and led his miracle troll out the door, stepping over the ugly-blooded corpse.

Karkat knew, knew, that there was no possible way this scenario was going to end in anything but gory and painful death. He didn't know the exact details yet, but he was sure they'd make themselves readily apparent as soon as the clown finished toying with him and got down to business.

Until then, he had to put up with the indignity of being led off, his blood on display for all to see and scorn. He could feel eyes peering out the neighboring hives' windows; they had to be. There was no way nobody would notice them—nobody would notice his blood—even if he was trying to hide it behind his hand. He could feel it trickle down to his chin and onto his shirt.

The clown had shifted his grip to Karkat's shoulder, walking behind him and pushing him along. When Karkat stumbled or took a wrong turn, he pressed his claws in—just a little, just enough—and Karkat corrected his course. And he was humming. The fucking clown was humming, and he was off-key and this pissed Karkat off more than anything else for some reason.

They passed the remains of the burned down hive, the smell making Karkat gag a bit. He thought, initially, that that was where the clown was taking him, that maybe, according to some twisted logic, that was going to be the place of his demise. But no, they walked on, beyond the remains and further on.

It was at that point Karkat gave up trying to understand anything. The fuck if he was spending his last living minutes being psychologically terrorized by some indigo fucker with power fantasies. So he stubbornly stared at the ground, doing his best to ignore this situation. He walked, concentrating only on putting on step in front of the other.

That was why it took him awhile to notice when they got to the beach. Walking over sand was difficult, and Karkat's feet kept slipping sideways, unused as they were to the unsteady terrain. When the clown hurried their pace a little, Karkat slipped and would have fallen over, but for the steadying hand on his shoulder. He felt claws sink into his skin deeper and leave tiny gouges, and the clown even ceased humming for a bit, but he was not allowed to stop.

But that slight stutter in the routine allowed Karkat to become aware of his situation once again, and now he was genuinely confused. Was the clown taking him for a swim? Did he plan to drown Karkat? Or feed him to seadwellers? Something yet more sinister, viler than anything Karkat could imagine?

Probably that last one, Karkat thought, knowing his luck.

They walked along the length of the beach for what seemed like hours. It was desolate and wending and Karkat never did get used to walking on the sand, so his calves were burning and his ankles were aching by the time he saw the structure in the distance.

It was a hive.

"Home sweet motherfucking home."

It was... the clown's hive?

The building was only just far away enough from the water not to get flooded. It looked fairly normal.

Except the wall facing the water was splattered with purple paint, which Karkat soon identified as seadweller blood. The coats were unevenly applied, and Karkat could pick out three different shades, probably applied at different times, given how they were layered.

"HAD TO TEACH THE FISHFACED ASSHOLES A LESSON," the clown said, after seeing Karkat stare at the purple wall. "Now the rest of 'em know to up and give a motherfucker his space, y'know?"

Karkat did not respond as he was pushed through the hive's front door. As he heard it being shut and locked, he felt slightly ill. He wondered what lesson was being reserved for him. The clown seemed very keen on educating other trolls. Somewhere in his hive, he probably had a colorfully blood-stained textbook on the proper etiquette to be used when interacting with murderous indigo-blooded clown-paint wearing maniacs, and every single person who ever needed it was already dead, because the first lesson was on how you should know all this shit already.

The clown's humming resumed, more cheerful than ever. He released Karkat, probably assuming (quite correctly) that he wouldn't try to escape.

Not that Karkat wasn't considering it. The moment the clown released his sweaty and bloodied shoulder, he started scanning his surroundings, looking for an escape route, for a weapon... something, anything. Heroes in movies and TV shows did it all the time, taking stock of their surroundings and using everything around them to maximum effect, while hatching a daring plan on the fly.

But Karkat had to admit he was not an action movie hero. At most, he'd be the comic relief, if he even qualified as fucking interesting enough for a speaking role. His mind was a blank as he looked about the bare interior of his kidnapper's hive.

"YOU COMING, BRO?" the clown asked, waiting in the threshold of a door impatiently.

Karkat snapped out of his reverie and followed, gaze to the floor. It was happening. Everything would end soon. At least the waiting was over.

He walked through the door and into what Karkat noted with some confusion to be an art workshop. Or maybe an atelier. Whatever the fancy word was that painters used to describe the room where they painted.

There were a few canvases out in the open, only one or two finished, but all done in the same abstract style: splatters and splashes, and blotches, and drips of color in every shade the hemospectrum had to offer. There were no concrete shapes that Karkat could identify, and if there was an order or a logic to anything, it was probably crazy clown logic alone.

There was one half-finished piece in the middle of the room, and Karkat could tell it was unfinished because the colors were a bit too orderly. It was also placed on the ground, for no reason Karkat could imagine, other than the aforementioned crazy clown logic.

"You all gettin' your art appreciatin' on?" the clown asked with a grin, appearing from seemingly nowhere.

Karkat refrained from commenting on the macabre displays, but the clown scarcely took notice.

"Yeah, sometimes I even come across some lucky motherfucker who's got some color I all like, and shit," he continues, with a wistful look to his unfinished piece. "Motherfucking miracle when that happens."

Oh, Karkat realized. They weren't all painted with blood. Though that was only marginally reassuring, because he now noticed the clown had a short knife and a wad of bandages in his hands.

"Like right now, you get me, bro? You're the lucky motherfucker today," he continued, absolutely serious and almost... reverent. "Motherfucking blessed, ya follow?"

"Uh..." Karkat was not sure what the appropriate response was to that. He certainly didn't feel lucky, or blessed, but he couldn't exactly contradict the guy with the knife. Fortunately he didn't seem to be expecting a reply.

"Push up your sleeve," the clown instructed.

Karkat hurried to do it, and hated himself just a little for his eagerness. He extended his arm, bare to the elbow, and the clown grabbed him by the wrist—surprisingly gentle, all things considered—and pulled it over a table, where an empty paint can was waiting. Then, slowly, he pressed the blade against Karkat's skin and slashed open his forearm in one swift descending motion. The cut was not deep, but it started bleeding immediately. Streaks of bright red slipped down Karkat's arm and into the can, the first drops producing frightfully loud metallic clangs as they hit the bottom.

Karkat was not completely sure how long he stayed like that, perfectly still, being drained, but the clown watched the entire process with a concentration bordering on the obscene. When the flow finally slowed, as his blood began to coagulate and the cut close, Karkat's fingers were cold and numb.

For a second, he was afraid the clown would open up another wound. The pain had just started to ebb and he was feeling lightheaded, so that would not have been pleasant (not that any of the events he'd experienced that night had been pleasant.)

But the clown threw the bandages at Karkat, who caught them awkwardly with his good hand.

"Ablution block's through there," the clown said, gesturing vaguely towards a door Karkat had not noticed before. "If you all wanna wash up or summat."

This seemed like a dismissal, because the indigo was not paying Karkat any more attention. Instead, he picked up the can of blood, almost three quarters full with the colorful substance, and moved to the unfinished painting, staring at it thoughtfully, probably planning on how he was going to integrate his new prize into the picture.

Karkat could not help but notice that the clown was not paying him any attention.

In a few clumsy motions, he tied the bandages around his forearm, just enough to cover the wound. The white material almost immediately turned candy red and the pain flared, but Karkat did not notice. He tiptoed (or at least, tried to not stomp like a hoofbeast) towards the other door. The one leading outside.

He managed to leave the room without alerting his host, and almost broke into a jog right there, but he mentally slapped himself for even considering it. He had to be careful and stealthy. Once he was outside, he could run and hide, but not until he was outside. He had to get there first.

He reached the front door, and he was almost dizzy with relief—or with blood loss. But the lock proved to be unexpectedly challenging. Not because it was complicated, but because it was hard to budge. The mechanism was half-rusted (probably something to do with the salty air, or some shit. He didn't really fucking care about the specifics at the moment), and Karkat's hand kept slipping on it, especially since he couldn't use the one on his injured arm.

He'd almost opened it all the way, almost made the stubborn contraption cooperate, when he was grabbed by the back of his collar, spun around and shoved into the door. The back of his head cracked painfully against it, and he was so dazed, he almost missed the angry troll screaming in his face. Almost.

"IS THAT THE MOTHERFUCKING ABLUTION BLOCK, YOU UNGRATEFUL PIECE OF CRAP?"

Karkat slipped to the ground, cradling his bleeding arm to his chest and nursing a brand new headache. Unfortunately, the clown was not going to let this slide so easily. He grabbed Karkat by the throat and pulled him to his feet, knocking him against the door once more. This time, Karkat was prepared, so his upper back took the brunt of it instead of his head.

"Is this the thanks I get, FOR TRYING TO ALL BE NICE AND SHIT?"

It was probably at that point that Karkat became completely sick and tired of the entire situation. Emotionally exhausted, he reverted to his default setting: angry. Not explosively, violently angry like the troll. Karkat's anger had always been inwardly directed for the most part. And now he was working himself up in a regular self-loathing frothing-at-the-mouth fit.

Then why don't you just kill me, Karkat thought, and he belatedly realized that he'd said it out loud, because the clown's expression changed almost completely. Still pissed off—nobody could look at the clown and say he was calm—but now a bit of something else. Surprised, probably. Karkat doubted many people were as fundamentally stupid as Karkat had been just then, to run their mouth at him. The clown released the grip he had on Karkat's neck.

"You say something, motherfucker?" And Karkat almost laughed, because the clown was giving him the opportunity to take it all back, to lower his head and say, 'No, I didn't say anything, sorry, I'll be good', but there was no way that was happening. Karkat had long since passed the point where his self-preservation overrode his incoming flip-out.

"Yeah, yeah I said something, you psychotic fuck. Why. Don't. You. Kill. Me. Did I need to fucking enunciate it for you? We both know this is where we're headed, so why don't we just cut out this coy shit right now and get to the juicy gory bits you've been looking forward to, okay? It's not like dying in fucking pain wasn't the foregone conclusion to the torture porn which I call my life, and let's face it, there's been enough padding already in this shitfest, time for Karkat Vantas to bite it like the mewling little bitch he is."

What followed were several seconds of utter silence on behalf of the clown, and heavy breathing on behalf of Karkat.

Well, that had to have done it. He was going to die for sure. Good job.

"Who the fuck is Karkat Vantas?" the clown asked eventually.

Karkat's jaw quite literally dropped.

"I am, you fucking ignorant piece of grarrgh..."

Rendered incoherent by rage Karkat slipped to the floor, pulled up his knees and leaned his forehead against them.

Fuck this noise. If the clown was going to kill him, he might as well do it while he was like this. The hell if Karkat was going to make it easier for him.

He stayed completely still for what might have been seconds, but felt like hours. He felt the clown crouch low on the ground in front of him.

"You're one crazy motherfucker, ain't you?" he asked, his tone more sedate than it had been all night.

Karkat raised his head and looked at him. He didn't seem upset. He seemed almost thoughtful. Not the least bit homicidal.

"Man, that weren't part of the plan," the clown continued in that same calm manner. "You don't motherfucking waste miracles when they all walk into your life, know what I mean, brother?"

Karkat did not know. Most of what the clown was saying sounded like gibberish to him. But he was too exhausted to attempt a reply.

"Get on your motherfucking feet, if you ain't gonna take care of that, I am," he said, pointing to Karkat's bleeding arm.

Karkat hoped that 'take care of it' wasn't some sort of code for chopping it off, but he had no grounds to complain when the clown was sounding all... reasonable. He got up to his feet and swayed, still light-headed, but the clown grabbed him by the upper arm—perhaps a bit too roughly—and steadied him. He then guided Karkat away from the door.

To his surprise, the clown was leading him to the ablution block.

"Gamzee Makara, by the way," he said out of the blue.

"...What?"

"My name, motherfucker," the clown said, a smirk in the corner of his lips. "Figure it ain't right what I know yours when you don't know mine."

It was almost uncanny how different the clown—Gamzee—acted after that incident. He cleaned Karkat's wound and dressed it in new bandages, and he was almost personable during the entire process. He even made Karkat wash the blood off his face, though the cut on his cheek was already closed and starting to heal. It was all a bit surreal, and incredibly creepy. It felt transgressive to let someone who was not even a friend, much less a quadrant, take care of his wounds, and he had to fight the urge to pull his arm back the whole time, but the entire thing was a lot less unpleasant than he expected. Karkat began to truly believe that he would not only live, but eventually be let go.

But then Gamzee gave Karkat's arm an appraising look, and said,

"We'll have to all cut the other one open next time," and Karkat's vascular pumping bladder sank.

As always, Karkat was his own worst enemy. He should not have for a moment let himself hope, because shit like that always lead to this kind of disappointment.

"Man, this all made me motherfucking hungry," Gamzee remarked apropos of nothing, and wandered out of the ablution block.

Karkat was slightly perturbed, because he couldn't imagine poking at someone's oozing wounds would have done wonders for his appetite, but then, to each his own.

He wasn't sure what to do, or what Gamzee expected him to do, but another escape attempt likely would not go over well, especially since it was clear the clown had every intention of keeping him alive. So he stood awkwardly in place, trying to decide if he was supposed to stay where he was or follow, but his decision was made for him.

"You coming, motherfucker?" Gamzee's voice rang after a while, and Karkat scurried after him.

The food preparation block was just as sparse as the rest of the hive that Karkat had seen so far. There was a large table in the middle, but only a refrigerifying unit and a few food storage containers in a corner. Gamzee was already halfway through the process of making a sandwich, which seemed to involve splattering a slice of yeast-based nutritional loaf with several varieties of grub sauce, and adding a thin pre-processed meat square before slapping another slice of the nutritional loaf on top.

It didn't look very appetizing, but between the fact that Karkat had lost a fair amount of blood and that he hadn't had the opportunity to eat anything that night, he suddenly felt ravenous.

Gamzee took a large bite out of the sandwich and was happily chewing before he noticed Karkat.

"Oh, fuck, I ain't all getting my host on proper over here, am I, motherfucker?" Gamzee said. "Here, I'll just make 'nother one."

He leaned over and held the sandwich out to Karkat.

Karkat eyed it hungrily. There was greasepaint where Gamzee had bitten into it, and there was also the fact that it was already bitten into, but Karkat had no way of knowing how long he'd be there or when the clown would remember to feed him next, so he only delayed for a moment before snatching the sandwich.

In three bites it was gone, before Gamzee had even finished making the next one. The indigo did not notice however. He'd started humming again, as he splattered grub sauce everywhere. Karkat couldn't help thinking that Gamzee's food preparation was like his art: messy and incomprehensible. Why did one sandwich need so much grub sauce? It ended up soggy and barely edible.

He did seem to derive a lot of enjoyment out of the process. A disturbingly gleeful sort of enjoyment. Karkat tried not to watch too closely.

In the end Gamzee made an entire stack of sandwiches, each more disgusting than the last. He pushed half the stack across the table in Karkat's direction (apparently the clown had an aversion to crockery), and Karkat saw fit not to insult his host. He ate them all, even though after his hunger was satisfied, it was more a chore than anything, and he had to be careful not to retch as he chewed on the soggy mess.

Gamzee certainly seemed to be enjoying his sandwiches, though. He ate them all with a huge smile on his face, staring off into space. He also chewed with his mouth open, and while Karkat didn't like to think of himself as prim, he did have to wonder if Gamzee's lusus had ever thought to teach him even the most basic manners.

Though, now that he thought about it, he didn't really see any evidence of a lusus' presence in the hive, no traces of fur, or scratched floors, or destroyed furniture. Perhaps it was too large to fit inside the hive, but he hadn't seen any signs of a lusus outdoors, either. If Gamzee weren't an unstable, untalented indigo-blooded clown who didn't know the proper use of the word "all" and went around abducting people, Karkat would be a bit concerned for him. Just a tiny bit.

As Gamzee was finishing eating, his eyes suddenly went wide. He made a sound in the back of his throat, like he'd just realized the secret to the universe, dropped his sandwich and dashed out the door of the food preparation block.

This made Karkat genuinely curious, so he followed. Gamzee was headed to his little art studio, and Karkat suddenly got the dreadful feeling he was going to see the artist at work.

As he got there, Karkat immediately regretted following.

The reason the unfinished canvas was on the floor, Karkat found, was because of Gamzee's technique, which seemed to involve dripping and splattering paint from above straight onto the canvas.

Gamzee took the can of Karkat's blood, the top of which had already started coagulating and was emanating an unpleasant smell, and dipped his hand in up to the wrist. He then flicked it over the canvas. A few darker clots hid the surface with a squelching sound, but brighter red droplets rapped against the canvas like raindrops against a hive roof.

There was no method to the pattern. Gamzee would randomly snap his wrist in different directions, but he seemed uninterested in keeping the colors even. One corner was drenched in Karkat's blood, while another had only a couple of droplets.

After a few minutes of this activity, Gamzee stopped suddenly. He was breathing heavily and his eyes were wild, but the smile on his face was satisfied, and maybe a little manic.

Karkat thought he was done, but Gamzee extended his hand over the canvas and tightened his fist. He dug claws into his own palm, and a few drops of indigo slipped between his fingers and fell over the corner where the red blood was most abundant. The colors blended together at the edges.

Finally, Gamzee turned his head to Karkat, apparently surprised to see him there, and Karkat flinched back slightly. But the clown's smile returned, more viscerally satisfied than before.

"COME CLOSER, BROTHER," he said. "Miracles need to be motherfucking witnessed."

Karkat did not really want to come any closer to the gory display, but his feet moved of their own volition until he was staring down at the canvas.

The colors were making him dizzy. Or maybe it was seeing so much of his blood at once, mocking him. Karkat seriously hoped Gamzee was not looking for a review, because if he had to open his mouth, he'd probably vomit all over the canvas, and while that would have summed up his opinion of it neatly, it would probably not be conducive to keeping his limbs intact.

But Gamzee only started laughing, like he'd just heard the best fucking joke ever.