thecapitol | lord have mercy

Who| Karkat and OPEN
What| After ~~nearly half a sweep~~ a year away, Karkat's back in the tribute tower. He's not happy about it.
Where| D1 suite, elsewhere in tribute tower, in the capitol itself
When| Week 6 and beyond
Warnings/Notes| I'll be putting up some prompts in the comments for the three locations, but otherwise feel free to make your own wildcard prompt! JSYK, Karkat has been revived a week or so after he died (roughly concurrent to when Kankri got resurrected from his) and looks roughly a year older than he was last time anybody saw him. As for warnings... there will be language, probably references to Karkat's death and a little bit of Homestuck spoilers.

Familiar overhead block surface.

Karkat blinks his occular orbs in dismay. He-- he fucking knows this place. Memories come flooding back. Panem. He's in fucking Panem. Held captive by the fucking Capitol humans. Here he was, half-a-sweep older, and now, now, he knew what a fucking travesty that really was.

"We made you," he mutters under his breath. "You should be worshipping us, not fucking turning us into reality television."

There's a paper container of mixed goods next to him on the resting platform. Karkat shakes it out onto the thermal retention fabric. A bottle of what proved to be some kind of artificial scent. A hat in the shape of a gelatinous sea creature. Rubber bouncing spheres in the shapes of his, Signless, and Kankri's heads. A pendant with an enameled picture of a hamburger on it. Gummy candies in the shape of hamburgers. A black shirt with the word DEAD written in his own blood color. A toy figure of himself whose head came off when you squeezed it.

Karkat stares down at the assorted goods. "What the fucking fuck?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That finally got a reaction out of Rat. "My parent?" he chuckled a little. "How could a rat this small be my parent? No, it's a new friend." What had Shion named it? He couldn't remember right now. Rat put the creature through a few more paces, including running after a pellet of food he flicked across the room.

"Why not?" Karkat says, slightly confused. "I used to have a friend named Tavros whose dad was this tiny little fairy bull, hardly bigger than your squeakvermin. I mean, it's not like he was your former host, that was some human female presumably."

What even was coming out of this guy's mouth? This was too ridiculous. But at least that made him somewhat interesting. "No, they're my friends." The rat snaked its way excitedly around Rat's fingers. "And those horns of yours, they're not some mutation?"

That gets a dirty look from Karkat. "No," he says, firmly, "the horns are not a mutation." Unless of course their smallness was a side effect of his mutation--no, fuck it, he wasn't going to think about it that way, they were going to start growing any day now. (No, no they weren't, not if Signless was any indication.) "I'm a troll, dumbass. We all have horns."

Edited 2014-03-23 07:03 (UTC)

Oh this was going to be good. "Are you the kind that I can banish with the tolling of church bells, or more similar to the kind that attacks heroes on their epic quest to save the world from a dire evil?"

Karkat stares at him. "What? No! First of all, our fucking churches favor bulb horns over tinkly bell hats--not that I'm fucking religious, but my best friend is--and second of all, what the fuck? Why would I randomly attack heroes? Where are these heroes even questing?"

He raised a finger to his chin in thought. "Well, you are a little small for a cave troll. Maybe you just lurk under bridges and harass passersby under threat of devouring them." Messing with this guy was just too much fun.

"Oh my fucking lord, we don't live under bridges, that's a fucking myth!

"Douchebag," he adds a half-second later, under his breath.

Rat could not have honestly cared less what insults he had for him under his breath. With a motion of a finger, the rat scampered over to Karkat, and cheeped at him from the arm of his chair. "He wants you to apologize for calling him a freak."

Karkat looks at Rat with a 'you've got to be kidding' expression and then at the squeakvermin and then back at Rat. Then he rolls his eyes. "Fine. Sorry," he says under his breath to the squeakvermin.

The rat cheeped excitedly, and ran around in a few tight circles. Then it darted back over to Rat where it happily accepted another bit of food. Food was always an effective training tool, be it deprivation, such as in the Districts, or West Block back home, or abundance, such as here in the Capitol or in No. 6. The similarities irritated him. This wasn't even his world and here he was, just as caught up in it as he had been, just as much a victim of it, and just as enraged by it. And worse, he was growing entirely too comfortable.

He seemed to glare at something just past Karkat for a moment, before his gaze went back down to his book without further word. The rat settled back into his lap again, only making the occasional chirp or cheep.

He didn't actually appear to be reading, though. His mind was a wreck. The arena was exactly as merciless as he had feared. Shion didn't stand a chance alone. And what exactly did he mean to accomplish by getting his menagerie of trained rats back up to speed? The most useful ones were the robots anyway.

Yeah, it had been entirely too long since he'd turned a page for him to actually be reading at all.

Karkat waves a hand in front of Rat's face. "Uh, dude? Squeakvermin guy?" What was he called... oh right it was the highblood word for his vermin. "Rat! You okay? You look like you want to fry the book with, like, your eye lasers or some shit. Those don't work here."

Rat caught Karkat's wrist in his fingers. His grip was hard, nearly enough to bruise. "Your voice is annoying." He snapped the book shut, and the rat seemed to take that as his cue to move up onto his shoulder. He released his wrist and stood up to head back toward his room.

Jegus fuck. He was trying to be nice to the asshole! Whatever. He's just a fucking human and Karkat should have fucking known better than to engage.

"Yeah, well, your pink monkey face is annoying!" he yells back.

Edited 2014-03-27 05:28 (UTC)

An insult like that is hardly worth responding to. He walked around his chair without a further word and headed for his room.

lord have mercy

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