(OPEN) at least he's not dead now

[crabmunicator]

Who| Karkat and whoever runs across him.
What| Now that he's out of the mini-arena, Karkat's exploring the place he has to live.
Where| All across the Training Center.
When| After his death in the mini-arena ~ a few days after. Anywhere around then.
Warnings/Notes| Karkat is pretty foulmouthed and irreverent, but nothing else. Feel free to use prose (whichever tense) or action; I'll adapt with you.

Of all the ways Karkat would wish to be welcomed someplace new, this was not one of them. Thanks to the arena, which they'd shoved him in with only minimal explanation, he'd suffered his second death in as many days. Wasn't it enough for Jane to fork him before he showed up? Did he really have to get...

He didn't want to think about it. Maybe it was better that it was something from the arena rather than a fellow tribute, but it didn't make being killed by an oversized, animatronic cartoon beast any better.

Even after, being alive was strange. Back during Sgrub and everything else before Panem, at least there were countless mechanics to explain why someone might revive. Here he didn't know what they did. Something technological? It wasn't unthinkable when they'd brought him here from another part of reality, and while he was glad to not be dead permanently, it was unsettling to think they had such technology at their disposal.

Now he was... not free, but at least somewhere safe. Not subject to the current edition of the Hunger Games, at any rate. He learned his district and what that meant. (District 6, transportation, here's your floor and your room.) He learned that the tower was host to tributes and the various mentors, escorts, stylists, and whoever else served part of this entertainment machine. Night would bring curfew, but days would be relatively open, giving him the chance to feel out his surroundings.

A.
One place he'd definitely find himself was the actual training center, the floor from which the building got its name. Being here would mean needing to be in shape and on his game, and while he had skills still left over from Sgrub, they would do no good if left unpracticed. If he could find a sickle amongst the weapons provided there, he'd be practicing with that. Otherwise he might check out the other stations. Learn knots? Sure. Learn edible plants? Worthwhile. And then there was regular old relief of frustration: he may not have been a fistkind user, but that didn't stop him from taking things out a punching bag.

B.
Night of course would leave him confined to the District 6 area. Unused to a bed, lacking sopor slime, and still rattled from the arena, he didn't sleep much. It didn't help that his species was naturally nocturnal, but even during the day he sought little rest. At least the common area had a TV and games to play, and the kitchen helped for hunger or thirst. It wouldn't be hard to spot the look on his face: tired and grumpy, with perpetual bags under his eyes.

C.
During the day again, he more than once found himself up on the roof. Here the atmosphere was less stifling, with fresh air and an actual sky to see, unlike the darkness or the void or luminescent shapes of dream bubbles back on the meteor. It wasn't his sky, not the one he knew from Alternia, but if it had been he wouldn't have been able to stand the sun. This was tolerable - relaxing, even - and it gave him a space from everything else.

D.
But beyond the rest, he wandered. The tower was big, and he knew well enough that people he knew had to be around. He'd heard mention, or seen a flash of horn in the arena he couldn't stop long enough to identify, and he had run into Eridan while he was still in there. It meant teammates or friends were here, and these above all else he sought out, carrying him through common rooms or the lobby or across hallways and elevators throughout the tower. Feasibly anyone could run into him; though short, most people weren't grey with horns, and it made him stand out.

Comments

[crabmunicator]

Tony's answer isn't just unwanted, but it relies on references he doesn't even know. He already implied he doesn't know what a giraffe is, and what the hell is a zebra? And a cross between them 'but brown'... it all flies past his head, drawing only a confused look with his mouth left crookedly ajar.

It shuts as he goes on, turning more to concentration. Someone angry and goat-like, but with a cape? Capes make him think Eridan, but goats make him think Makaras, and the Initiate didn't seem the type for those. But then again, Gamzee's fake-ass god tier outfit did have something like one... if you were to count the funny streamers at the back.

Dear sweet fuck, please let Gamzee not be here.

"One, shut the fuck up. Two, horn shapes and sizes vary between trolls. Three, we have individual personalities, you stereotyping lump of cholerbear offal. And last, who's this other troll you met? What did the horn shapes look like? Was there face paint?"

[arrogantalloy]

Tony watches the troll look like a slightly confused cod as he's trying to work out what it is Tony's actually going on about. At least as a plus side to Karkat, this is hardly the first time he's caused people to look like that, nor will it likely be the last, either.

"You do know if I follow your first order I can't actually answer your question, right?" His tone is verging on bored as he points that out but then he shrugs and shakes his head.

"Not that I was planing to actually shut up anyway. No, no face paint, just glasses and a purple streak in his hair. " He lifts a hand with his index finger extended drawing a lighting bolt in the air. "His grumpy horns looked like this, tell me do you have gemstones in your bellybutton?"

His question is almost over his vague description of the horns, because to be fair, both trolls he's met now have had hair that is pretty spiky enough and okay, so they didn't have neon hair and beige skin like the silly nostalgic toys. But Moses doesn't actually look like Charlton Heston but still carries a staff, there's always a grain of truth somewhere.

[crabmunicator]

Karkat watches, and the gesture is a solid illustration, an instant identification, and actually kind of unnecessary after the mention of glasses and a purple hair streak. Eridan's kind of distinct like that.

"You moron, what kind of goats does Earth have that you would call him goatlike? Those horns have nothing to do with them. If you want goats, you want a Makara, but they're awful." He's very certain about the awfulness, but he doesn't linger on it. Instead he brings his hands up to either side of his face to wiggle with fingers splayed outward. "You had to have seen the fins, right? Like this. Prominent, right there, on his face. He's a sea dweller, you brainless dolt. His lusus was a skyhorse for fuck's sake."

Yes, he just said skyhorse.

His hands drop, and he asks, "What the hell is a bellybutton? We don't have gems anywhere unless we wear them on rings or whatever."

[arrogantalloy]

"Goat was the first thing with horns that came to mind. Though I wouldn't put it past someone to try and force horns to develop like that. And the guy does have a habit of bleating on." He pauses at the Makara reference. "Which is awful, goats or Makara?"

Of course by the time Karkat starts showing off his hands as fins to further point out how apparently wrong Tony was about Trolls (Not that he cared), Tony was able to keep one hell of a straight face, even when Karkat starte to bring up whatever a lusus was then dropping his hands to ask about belly buttons.

"Wait, I missed that. Could you do that fin thing again?"

He raised a curious eyebrow, he might be actually teasing the kid, but something about the fact he went to all that trouble to imitate fins in the first place made Tony want to know if he could make him do it again.

[crabmunicator]

"Makaras," he clarifies, in the plural. He... actually doesn't care much about one of them, but between the Initiate and Gamzee he's got a negative bias going. "And no one forces their horns to develop a certain way. It's genetic."

Of course Tony doesn't answer his actual question, but then it's probably as stupid as the rest of this. And this is stupid. It's moronic on a level that's increasingly impressive, if being impressed meant an odd pressure building in his skull like the start of a headache.

He gives him a flat look. "Humans have fish and you've seen Eridan. I'm not doing the fin thing again. You weren't even clever about asking."

[arrogantalloy]

The name Makara still means nothing to him when Karkat pluralises it. While he probably seen Initiate around he hasn't paid enough attention to him to actually learn a name to go with the look.

"Horns can be negotiable, You just need, well maybe an iron tube in the shape you want." He's thought this up pretty much off the top of his head, but if you can train tree's to grow in certain ways then really horns can't be too much harder to redesign, it's more of an ethical problem than a development issue.


"Wasn't trying to be clever, I just wanted to see how set on demonstrating you were." He gives a vaguely indifferent sniff. "I don't personally have fish, but I know that he doesn't look like a regular fish, an axolotl if they were aggressive maybe, but that's an amphibian, not a fish."

Then he pauses for a thought.

"Wait, so what, you're all what, vaguely attributed to animals or something? Or just Eridan and Makara's?"

For the most part, Tony doesn't actually care, but there's that curious scientific part of him that just loves to know things like this.

[crabmunicator]

Karkat cringes at the idea as Tony lists it. "No, that just sounds painful and time consuming. The horns never stop growing, and even when we first pupate they're already in the basic shape. They just get longer as we grow up."

Not that his are ever going to get long, as his ancestor's pathetic nubs have proven to him. He's not bitter at all.

He ends up sighing at him. "I don't know what an axolotl is and I really don't care. Eridan's not special on his own; he's a sea troll. They were a whole biological subdivision of trolls, and they all have facial fins and gills for breathing water. I didn't mean the fish comparison literally, anyway - we're insectoid at the base." The mention of pupation should have suggested that, if Tony was paying attention.

"The only other association we have is from our lusii, which are what raise us."

[arrogantalloy]

"Really seems like a set and forget thing to me. Put the horn shape you want on the cow, strap it on and then come back in a few years."

He really only has this level of nonchalance about the whole affair because he doesn't have horns of his own, or a horned animal he feels like trying it out on. That's a biologists problem, not an engineers.

As Karkat apparently seems to eagerly explain to Tony Troll biology while sounding as put out as possible, Tony has to admit on the purely scientific level he's actually kind of curious about this.

"So what you're trying to tell me, Starship Troopers. Is that insects have horns?" He leans closer to look at the nubs. Almost wanting to touch them but not. "Because back home insects don't have horns so much as point bits of shell sticking out of them. So are these Keratin or Chitin? The whole Halloween themeing of them is throwing me off a bit here."

Sadly for Karkat, he isn't at all the only person here who can rabbit on for a long time about things people may not actually give a damn about.

troll biology is weird and Hussie doesn't explain much of it anyway

[crabmunicator]

"We're not cows, asshole!"

Karkat's words all come with snappish attitude, but there is a clear distrust as he backs away from Tony's curious lean. He feels too much like a specimen being examined, and the unfamiliar references don't do much to endear him.

"They're not Halloween-themed, whatever that is," he snaps. "I'm not a biologist, either, and the last schoolfeeding I had before the apocalypse was when I was six sweeps old. Even if I did know enough to answer every question you might have, that doesn't mean I could translate it all in a way you would understand. I can tell you our skeletons aren't calcium-based, but that's the most you're getting."

[arrogantalloy]

"It was an example." Tony shakes his head with a put upon sigh, because really this kid.

"It looks like candy corn. That's pretty much the definition of Halloween themed these days." He rolls his eyes. "But the not being calcium-based. Helps."

Tony doesn't ask what a sweep it, mostly because he doesn't care and doesn't need to ask about the apocalypse because Tony already knows that these trolls share Dave's universe, so Tony already got the attempted cliff notes from the teen on that front.

"You know, this whole stand-offish information booth thing you have going on here, it's compelling."

[crabmunicator]

"I don't know what Halloween means, you narrow-minded ape." Karkat sighs, rough and impatient. Tony would win points if he guessed that Karkat also didn't care enough to learn.

Though he wouldn't have minded explaining the apocalypse so much, the lack of extra questions doesn't exactly hurt.

He snorts at the last statement. "You realize I'm not doing this on purpose, right?" He gestures now, using his hand for emphasis. "Idiots just flock to me like birds to spilled bread, chirping whatever inanity pops into their tiny skulls. It is only by the act of answering and informing that I can abate the raucous influx of ignorance, and for all my frustration it saves me the effort of having to hear the same shit repeated five minutes later. Trust me, whatever the hell your name is, you aren't special."