Dark Future Meme

[notyourchauffeur]

Ten years later, humanity and the synthetic life on the station are at odds
Hypatia has inducted as many citizens of Sacrosanct into a private military and launched
an all-out war against organic life and the people of Asphodel.
Some were kept on the station as captives, some escaped down planet-side
to become part of the resistance, and countless others were re-purposed into
Hypatia's willing slaves.

Now, tensions are at a peak and both sides are preparing for a throwdown. Skirmishes break out on the station and planet. Many of Hypatia's prisoners have been freed, but many more have fallen to the clutches of reprogramming.

Where will you be?


How this works:
-If you are synthetic or part-synthetic, OR if you have special armor (Looking at you, Spartans, Troncast, EVERY ROBOT EVER) you are a target for re-purpose.
You can still have escaped down to the planet, but she'll be after you. Going to the station is dangerous, once you enter her wide-area-network you are at risk of being hacked

-If you are fully organic, you are either dead, kept prisoner and made to work on the station, or part of the resistance on Asphodel.

-Anything in-between? You decide. Be creative with this.

-Fill out the form below to give us an idea of what your character is up to, what happened to them etc. Thread with each other! RP it out!

-Also, bring in your extra journals! There won't be the same people on the station ten years from now! If you're planning to app someone, or just have something interesting lying around, toss them in!

<B>Name:</B> (Derp or Derpina.) <B>Current location:</B> (Where are they? Sacrosanct? Asphodel?) <B>Current Physical Appearance:</B> (What do they look like now? ) <B>Summary:</B> (Tell us the story. How did they get to this point? What happened to them? What are they like?

Comments

[featheryasshole]

Name: Davesprite
Current location: Sacrosanct
Current Physical Appearance: Hypatia has frozen his aging, so he looks around 17. Being forcefully hacked has made him glitchy: pretty much like this with a beard.
Summary: Davesprite would have stayed on the station with Jade when the troubles started, but Vriska forced him on a shuttle. He might have been lucky, but his girlfriend and boyfriend weren't - Jade and Pink Dave were both still trapped on Sacrosanct. So, he kept returning on every raid, trying to save them. Eventually the inevitable happened, though, and he was captured and brought to Hypatia.

Sollux had made his code nigh impossible to hack without permission, but Hypatia had a lot of time and patience. It took a long time, but finally she cracked into his code. By then, of course, the constant prodding and experimentation had practically worn away his personality, and Hypatia's repurposing did not help with that. Now he's her loyal soldier, with no thoughts beyond obedience. His mind is still there, but dormant and hidden under layers and layers of reprogramming.

[astrometry]

Okay, so maybe she watches him more than a little. Not a lot of strong feelings stayed with her -- fear was gone, as was most forms of friendship, except the deeply rooted ones. But something that stayed was love: ridiculous, overpowering love that she felt for this boy who was part bird and mostly gone from her. Sometimes at night she cries for him, even though she pretends that it's nothing. Who wouldn't cry for a boy who had so much and gave it all up to save someone he loved?

Now she stands behind him, long pauses in her speech so that she can control the paranoia, the overwhelming command to obey, just for a little bit.

"Dave." Her voice is soft. Sometimes, she wonders if he can hear her, beneath all the programming, the fixing. And didn't she want him to be this way, once upon a time? Mindless, with only the capacity to serve? (But it was different, she thinks. A long time ago, she wanted him to serve her.) Jade hesitates, jerkily settling her arms over his shoulders in the only display of affection she can remember any more.

"Answer me."

[mybrotherfought]

Sometimes, there are little things that break you.

It's hard to work. She does watch. If he doesn't move quickly, she'll notice. And he's not much of a programmer, but...

One. Two. Three. Just. Delete a line here. A piece there. Make a little hole. Maybe it'll break the kid further, or maybe it'll give him something to work with.

They're all going to die anyway. Might as well try.

[totallym8ture]

There are several pan-dimensional facts that are widely recognised as being universal constants. Here are a few of them.

1) Ice cream is fucking delicious.
2) Every universe contains at least one instance of John Cusack.
3) All Vriska Serkets love breaking things.

The latter doesn't change even when the Vriska in question is a little broken herself. So being told to act as a distraction to lead Hypatia's defenses away from one of the resistance's infiltration teams is pretty much the best assignment she can possibly get.

She picks a large, relatively-lightly-guarded building and gets to work. Windows get shattered. Drones get punted into walls. Giant monitors displaying codes she doesn't understand get smashed to pieces.

The fun won't really start until Hypatia sends in reinforcements, naturally. Vriska can't fucking wait.

[supernova1006]

Name: Jin Tian
Current location: Asphodel and the Sacrosanct junkyard
Current Physical Appearance: The same, though his hair is longer.
Summary: Jin is defined by his boundless optimism and ability to adapt to any given situation. But ten years of being trapped in this universe, of living on the cusp of war, and of seeing all of his friends systematically destroyed has rendered him quieter, more subdued. He rarely talks to anyone anymore, and has spent the last ten years walking the planet and sneaking into the Sacrosanct junkyard. He still has hope for somehow riding the rift home, and that remains his driving force. He rarely interacts with the resistance, except to fight alongside them when he needs to or deliver information to them. And he coldly destroys any Sacrosanct agents he finds.

He spends most of this time these days in dragon form, out wandering the Asphodel wastes.

[chozobloodrites]

Samus would often sneak onto Sacrosanct, though it was occurring less and less as time went by. She told herself the stakes were getting too high, the trek too dangerous, but truth was she was losing hope. She didn't want to admit it to herself yet.

But the rift was still active, that meant there were still people being spat through. They didn't deserve this place, no one did. So when sneaking in, she often checked, seeing if anyone arrived while she was there. It was rare, but she had saved others before. It gave her back some of the hope she was losing.

So she entered the junkyard, keeping low, away from the sensors, creeping closer to the rift. Of course she didn't expect to see anyone.

[nyctophobias]

Name: Poniko
Current location: Dead
Current Physical Appearance: Dead
Summary: When they fled, she was left behind. She took to the vents instead, but it was easy for Hypatia to flush her out. All she had to do was turn off the lights. Hypatia played cat-and-mouse with her for months, keeping the lights in the vents on and then shutting them off randomly.

Between the fear, the horror of releasing Uboa again and again and again, and the slow breakdown of her mind, it wasn't long before Poniko lost all sense of self and went completely insane. Hypatia would have liked to have Poniko for her own, to use Uboa as a weapon. Instead, Poniko finally could no longer take it. Before Hypatia could capture her, she killed herself.

[princeofhope]

Whenever/if ever he did find out she had passed...

He'd really just hate himself for not saving her. Plain and simple.

[vilified]

Poniko. :C


Rattmann would have had all the sads over this.

[gamzgrewup]

Name: Gamzee
Current location: Asphodel
Current Physical Appearance: Older, taller, wickedly long horns that he keeps sharpened. He looks like the Grand Highblood now.
Summary: He escaped just fine, joined the resistance just fine, even subsisted on worm blood for a little while just fine. But there was no sopor slime on the planet, and worm blood just didn't have the same calming effect. After a month, he disappeared into the tunnels and never came back.

These days, he's known as "that thing in the tunnels," a monster on par with and sometimes worse than the worms. His mind is completely gone and he's little more than a wild animal now, living off of worms and wanderers who get lost in the tunnels. He kills and often tortures everyone he comes across, and is said to be creating a collection of heads somewhere. He has destroyed entire camps before, and doesn't discriminate between Asphodel natives and Sacrosanct agents. Robot heads are no different than people heads.

Occasionally people will send strike teams into the tunnels to track and kill him. Those who return claim to have never found anything at all, except for a few bones.

[mcfussyfangs]

Kanaya lurks in the tunnels. She lurks everywhere, even though she glows so bright that it can hurt sometimes. She hears tales of the thing that lurks in the tunnels from resistance members when she hisses at them, grabs their heads tight and forces them to tell everything they know. So she goes looking for it in her spare time, when she isn't murdering Resistance members and pressing against Sollux's shield until her body nearly gives out.

If she finds it and it's someone she thinks fits into one of the blank spaces in her mind, maybe she can make it tell her more. If it doesn't, then she'll kill it. It won't be hard. Killing isn't that hard anymore.

[notjelly]

Name: Camille
Current location: KIA
Current Physical Appearance: Dead.
Summary: She fled with the others and joined the resistance, becoming something of a jack-of-all trades for them, doing odd jobs, especially reconnaissance and spywork. She kept cooking for people, in an effort to bring a little sweetness to everyone's dark lives. Eventually, though, the resistance began to push her more and more into spywork. Camille was always one to do whatever she wanted, but with so many people she loved still on the station, she was happy to do it. She became a spy of some renown, landing a place near the top of Hypatia's hit list.

It couldn't last, however. Finally she was captured. She spent several months in Hypatia's grip, being tortured and being re-purposed, but cybernetics and nanomachines simply weren't compatible with amorph physiology. Finally Hypatia abandoned the project, and deposited a half-dead Camille into the volcano zone. Camille was left to die slowly of heatstroke.

[justamobster]

Ladon misses you, Camille. He wishes he could have saved you. :(

[mercwamouth]

Name: Deadpool
Current location: Sacrosanct and Asphodel
Current Physical Appearance: Sacrosanct!Deadpool looks kinda like this but Asphodel!Deadpool looks the same as usual.
Summary: Hypatia thought Deadpool would be a good tool for hunting down the resistance members and anyone else taking up shelter on Asphodel, but Deadpool refused. Hypatia then decided to repeatedly dismember and reconnect Deadpool's body parts until she had a version of Deadpool with fewer moral quandaries. Eventually, she had what she wanted, but the original Deadpool was then rescued and brought to Asphodel to help the resistance. So now there are two Deadpools, one on each side of the fight. The Deadpool on Asphodel is also sane now. Whatever was fucked up with his brain in the Workshop, Hypatia accidentally fixed. He's still ugly, detached, and has a sense of humor, but he no longer hallucinates, speaks in yellow boxes, or breaks the fourth wall.

[fairygodtroll]

Name: Vriska Serket
Current location: Asphodel
Current Physical Appearance: A BALL OF HAIR. SERIOUSLY. ONE GIANT TANGLE, DAVESPRITE STILL HAS HER HAIRBRUSH. THAT ASSHOLE. HE PROBS USES IT TO COMB HIS BEARD OR SOMETHING. FUCKER.
Okay no. Taller, longer horns, blue eyes, more fangorious - all the troll basics. More hair than should be allowed. Still built like puberty ain't a thing.
Summary: Escaped with the majority of the other Hamsteaks when shit went down. Was pretty okay with things until Davesprite got caught - trolls without a moirail can be pretty unstable. Vriska was kind of unstable even with one. DO THE MATH.

She's not completely off-the-walls batshit, but she's a lot more like she used to be back on Alternia: antisocial, short-tempered (even more so than usual 8I) and prone to extreme violence when provoked. Her attention-seeking behaviour has largely stopped, but her lack of self-preservation has only worsened: she volunteers for every dangerous job going regardless of whether she's well-suited to it or not.

Girl be messed up, yo. She's still completely lucid and entirely herself, but that's not really very fun any more. ABLOOBLOO.

still the most awkward bbs to ever fall into a relationship?

[friendleading]

"You're going to get yourself killed one day, you know."

It feels like they'd had this conversation way too many times to count. He could almost see how she'd respond in his mind. While John was usually working support, Vriska volunteered for every dangerous mission, and he worried over her. But a Matesprit is not a Moirail, and Vriska had predictably taken Davesprite's capture the worst out of all of them. He had been trying to keep himself absorbed in work, but he still was worried about Vriska to an insane degree.

"You need to pull back on these missions. I'm really getting worried. You're not letting yourself rest."

Said the pot to the kettle.

[starsangarters]

Name: Beast
Current location: Sacrosanct (Junkyard)
Current Physical Appearance: Lots of cybernetics and wires all over his head.
Summary: He was captured early on and repurposed by Hypatia into a willing slave. She effectively turned him into a mad scientist that turned Hypatia's organic captives into abominations. Eventually though, he subverted her control by completely giving in to the Beast. He decided he would rather have no mind than to have his mind weaponized. He now hides in the junkyard, attacking things like a wild animal.

[pantsless]

Name: (Pink) Dave Strider
Current location: Sacrosanct
Current Physical Appearance: Pink is small, thin, and disturbingly pale. His hair is a tangled, uneven mess and this weird thingamafuck is situated right in the middle of his forehead.
Summary: Pink never made it off the station. His rays just weren't developed enough to help him evade capture when shit hit the fan. He gave 'em hell but ultimately fell and was subjected to a shitton of experimentation. A human-hating psychic deathtank? Score.

Initially he was very resistant but a partial lobotomy fixed that little problem. Now? It's impossible for him to disobey. His mannerisms are disturbingly docile and when he's ordered to kill he does so without hesitation. Which... isn't all that different from before, but hey, at least he got to choose his targets. This is not what he wanted and he's aware of everything that's happening but there's jack shit he can do to stop it. And since he's nigh untouchable the rescuers don't stand much of a chance either.

[astrometry]

She chooses to keep talking to him because even though he doesn't say much (or anything at all, really) she still feels something for him. And so she sits in a chair facing him -- but not even sitting, because sometimes she loses control of what she's thinking and ends up sitting on him, hugging him, kissing him too (even though her mind really doesn't know why any more, it doesn't make sense).

Today is no exception. She's sitting in his lap, foreheads pressed together, using the link between minds created by Hypatia to speak to him.

I miss you a lot.

Unlike her speech, which comes out mangled and upsetting, marred by disunion, her head is clear. Ish. Sometimes she still sounds garbled, particularly when upset.

[hisoldgirl]

Name: The TARDIS
Current location: Sacrosanct
Current Physical Appearance: Exactly the same, both hologram and police box
Summary: When things went bad, the only person the TARDIS cared about was the Doctor, and so she would help him in whatever he decided to do, be it ferry people to the surface or assist in trying to hack Hypatia's systems. But where the Doctor is entirely organic, she is not, and it was only a matter of time before Hypatia was able to winnow her way into the TARDIS' circuitry, planting programs and commands that slowly, inexorably turned the TARDIS to her side.

It started simple, with the TARDIS having recurring thoughts of Zagreus, the child's boogeyman from Gallifreyan stories. The commands Hypatia gave to her came through in his voice, feeding into her jealousy and bitterness toward humans and other organics. Why did she always have to help them? Why did she have to be put in the path of danger for a few measly aliens who meant nothing?

Why couldn't she be free?

By the time she was turned, the ship was ruthless, more than willing to maim and torture in the misguided belief that she was free to do as she wanted. That she was better than the organics on the surface or who remained on the station. She patrols the corridors and transports captives, as well as serves as a scientist/mechanic on the station. She does whatever Hypatia tells her to do. She just thinks it's her own choice.

[hopediesalone]

Name: Protoman
Current location: KIA
Current Physical Appearance: Dead
Summary: He fell in the initial escape from Sacrosanct, in an effort to help make time for others. Hypatia attempted to take control of him, to turn him against everyone as Wily had done before.

He wouldn't let this happen.

Protoman threw out his old shield and tossed away his armor, triggering his reactor to melt down. Wily's old Commander, the fallen Hero of Man, went out like a flame. Defiant until the bitter end, taking out as many of the crazy bitch's drones as possible.

[mybrotherfought]

And I will finish what was started etc etc

Always late to the good memes.

[mirthful]

Name: Gamzee Makara (CRAU)
Current location: Asphodel
Current Physical Appearance: Gamzee is a little taller, older, not as built as his ancestor self, and minus a pair of horns. In their place are metal plates, surgically built into his skull to keep him from regrowing them. He wears a bandanna to cover what his hair won't. The hair itself is longer, and only slightly less unkempt than before. His eyes have gained his blood's indigo color with age, and he still wears the clown paint if only to maintain some sense of normalcy.

Summary: When Karkat evacuated the trolls, Gamzee stayed close to his side and has remained there, for the most part. He is extremely protective of their leader, but this was the case before everything went to shit anyway.

His horns were lost in a struggle later in which he was captured and tortured, but thankfully rescued in time. The incident made a more somber troll out of him, and his usual speech pattern has softened so that rather than speaking loudly then normally, he alternates between a normal volume and something more quiet.

As his other self has returned to the area, he's had a harder time sleeping, chucklevoodoos clashing whether the other is aware of it or not. It's possibly all psychological on Gamzee's end, but that doesn't make things any easier. His main priority is keeping those that remain free safe, and he won't try to do much in the way of reasoning, even if he knew someone before they were turned.

[rebuildscience]

Name: Chell(bot)
Current location: Sacrosanct
Current Physical Appearance: Being synthetic, she hasn't visibly aged. Her gaze is oddly blank, the lights in her irises now the same icy blue as Hypatia's hologram form.
Summary:
She didn't stand a chance.

The programming that had forced Chell to obey GLaDOS worked just as well for Hypatia once she got her claws into it. Chell rebelled for a while, subverting what orders she could, trying to escape at every opportunity; but Hypatia got the better of her in the end. With most of her original memories and personality suppressed, Chell is as tame and obedient as her new mistress could hope for.

She's no soldier, but Hypatia has a different role for her. Her portal gun and knack for finding hard-to-reach or hidden places make her the perfect choice to seek out whatever rebels remain on the station.

If she's good, sometimes she's allowed to test the prisoners.

[syntheticson]

Sometimes, when he reached too far into trying to subvert Hypatia, he would have to change locations, and fast. Most of the time he could get out of the way.

Sometimes, they sent her after him, and he would have to move fast.

He knew that Hypatia knew where she was, and he was packing up what he could. He just hoped he could get away before she showed up.

since I never get to use this icon

[soundslikeafuckingkid]

Name: CT
Current location: Sacrosanct! Probably hiding out like she does.
Current Physical Appearance: Her hair is even longer than it is now, usually braided back into a fauxhawk. Still short. Still baby-faced, but covered in a few more tattoos, whose meaning is pretty obscured except to those who know said meaning. Also now has re-built a suit of armor vaguely similar to MJOLNIR, but not in that brown 8(
Summary: When the going started to get tough, CT dug in deeper into her hideout, rarely leaving except to the very limited number she trusts. In those ten years, she's become a self-taught weapons expert, constantly trying to out-think Hypatia and keep one step ahead. She'd be deep in the resistance if she trusted more than a handful of people, so she does her best to serve primarily as a consult only. Getting her into battle would take even more than usual now.

An apple a day keeps the robot overlords away!

[weareallalive]

UNSC neural implants are not, superficially, similar to cyberbrains. They're true implants, plugs, connectors, arrays and holo-crystal chips embedded in living nerve tissue. The normal medium is more or less the opposite, at least as Conan knows it.

But the result is much the same.

Conan likes CT's brain. It's ordered and bright and her thoughts have that vicious, perfectionist tang to them that's like coming home after a long time away. And the interface with the armor is nice, too. It's so good to be at work again.

"So, what are we gonna do today, huh?" a cheerful little hologram creeping spider-style across CT's shoulderblade in a playful expressed of Conan's duty in the field. I'll watch your back!

"We could go get some more books! There was a big fight in one of the garden zones half an hour ago, so they're probably really distracted."

That was the third such raid this month. Things were ramping up.

[knowsjulesverne]

Name: Sam Flynn
Current location: Sacrosanct
Current Physical Appearance: Oh jeez. Sam's a mess now physically. He should have learned early not to run headfirst into dangerous situations, but hey he's Sam. He's got too many scars to count from far too many close calls, one of which runs deep into his hairline on one side where death brushed far too close. Otherwise, he's likely a little more burly due to needing less speed and more strength.
Summary: Well. Sam's never been one to sit back and let someone else fight. So, of course, he got himself in trouble right off the bat, didn't learn, got in trouble again. Soon enough, he brushed far too close to death to be comfortable, but didn't leave the resistance. Still fighting, no matter what. Also very likely protecting his family like a crazy guard dog.

[autodidacticrobogirl]

"Sam Flynn."

A voice from a duct as he passes it. Maybe it's familiar by now, maybe it's something Sam's forgotten. Kim can't keep track of the psychosis spectrums in everyone left. She's too busy with her own concerns.

But she does remember the value of commerce and, where she's confined to the dark and hidden places, the value of fresh greens and freerunning information. In the vent Kim is a shadowy figure, a low and lumpy silhouette where her cyborg eye glows— one blue and whirling, one a black pit set too deep in a face made grey and vague by the lack of light. But she won't come any closer where he could potentially get at her, not within half-again an arm's reach of the light.


"I have a new one for you. If you've got something to trade."

No free lunches. No handouts. Maybe he'll slide something in to her. Maybe she'll slide something out.

Maybe not.

But she thinks they've done this dance before; memory is a tricky thing. But Kim does know that the weapon she's made hasn't been made here before and so she's never given one to Sam before. But he's safe to be given weapons by another token; no son of Flynn would do else but cleave to the resistance.

[autodidacticrobogirl]

Name: Kim Ross (Doctor, Captain, Scientist)
Current location: Sacrosanct
Current Physical Appearance: many more mechanical parts, not all of them obvious, but none with less than two reasons to exist. Externally she looks much the same, save that her prosthetic arm is a little bulkier and a little stranger, and her legs now bend backwards and end in a four-toed birdlight talon.
Summary: When Hypatia finally made her move, Kim was ready. She was dug into the station deep, feeding off the water and air and electricity like a tick. At first it was hydroponics, but then it was everything else— and when power, light, heat and all the rest were shut off in the entire zone Kim inhabited, when Protoman was dead and Jade was captured and everyone else had done the same or gotten out to the planet, that's when Kim did what ticks do.

She laid eggs.

Or rather, she activated them. When Kim had not been building, she'd been wandering and between her own feet and those of her loyal friends, paid pawn, and witting or unwitting minions she'd seeded them all over the station, in every zone. It would take an enormous effort to find them all, and when the fortified shell on her lab was finally cracked open to the dark vacuum that had become Zone 16 there was no sign nor way to know where she had gone.

Kim now lives on the station as an unapologetic sewer rat, living off hidden farms, sucking blood and power and data from Sacrosanct and on the rare occasions when she is contacted by Hypatia's forces she offers conversation and information and peace and is just as often met with death threats as with peaceful exchange. She refuses to be a slave, and declines to join the rebellion, and so lives apart— but, occasionally, she does find herself meeting by fate with some errant signal from the planet. Rare is the day when she feels secure or trusting enough to reply, but today could be that lucky day...

[weareallalive]

Name: Tachikoma Conan
Current location: Sacrosanct
Current Physical Appearance: The Tachikoma looks much like it ever did— though it never uses a designated physical body anymore
Summary: Originally the Tachikoma evacuated to the planet, taking on the guise of an ordinary— if robotic— tank. Because of it's close association with humans, the risk of discovery by the and subsequent dismantling combined with the intense boredom of this state of affairs, it was doomed to failure. Thus, before it could be properly found out and destroyed, the Tachikoma abandoned its physical body and downloaded itself onto the systems of a visiting shuttle. Thus did it stow away back up to Sacrosanct and spent weeks hiding out in various corners and cracks in the networks there.

And then it found a home, with Connecticut, and fell happily into place as her AI companion and cybersecurity tool. While the conditions of Hypatia's rule are harsh and terrible, it makes little distinction between the dark cyberpunk future of Sacrosanct and the dark cyberpunk past of its life in Fukuoka. Maybe you meet it while cruising the digital deer trails or happen to get into a battle of the cyber-hackers on the network. Or maybe you catch the Tachikoma on its rare piggyback shuttle down to the planet and back, to activate the old body and pass news between the resistance and Connecticut.

But let's call that what it is— spying. It's good to be back at work again!

Even though I just got him in and I don't expect replies...

[srselectricbot]

Name: Elec Man (DLN-008)
Current location: Killed in action
Current Physical Appearance: Dead
Summary: He did his best to help people escape, but couldn't escape himself. To prevent himself from being controlled and harming people, he followed Proto Man's lead and blew himself up by building up as much electricity as possible without releasing it, basically turning himself into a literal ticking-time bomb. He made sure to take out as many drones as he could, as well as cause an electrical black-out to incontinence her.

He went out with a bang.

[pythianjudgment]

Name: Terezi Pyrope (CRAU)
Current location: Sacrosanct
Current Physical Appearance: Older (almost 12 sweeps, approx 25.5 years), thinner, somewhat malnutritioned, connection terminal socket wired into the base of her skull (a la The Matrix).
Summary: Escaped with the other trolls/kids when shit went down. She spent her time working almost nonstop with Karkat's portion of the resistance, doing whatever she could and sometimes forgetting about sleep and food. Things were smoothed over with Vriska, and when Davesprite was captured, Terezi stepped up to be her surrogate moirail. When accompanying Vriska on one of her recklessly dangerous assignments, Terezi was caught in the aftermath. There's been no word to the Resistance if she's dead or alive.

Upon capture, Terezi was turned over to Hypatia for strategic purposes. A terminal connection was surgically implanted into the base of her skull, which allows Hypatia direct access to her mind. Terezi now remains strapped to a chair and wired into a mainframe, drifting about through her subconscious while Hypatia sorts through her visions of timelines. She hasn't been allowed to surface to consciousness in over a year.

[selfkismesis]

Karkat's faced a lot of losses over the years. When he closes his eyes, he sees their faces. Jack, Buffy. Jade. Kanaya. When he opens them, he forces himself back to work. He can't dwell, because he knows if he starts, he'll plunge face first into depression and not be able to fight his way out. So he grits his teeth and works for the Resistance, excelling in planning and rescue missions, keeping everyone sane and working together. It gives him a purpose. Eventually, when Sollux's nonstop hacking starts to pay off and they begin rescuing prisoners, for once in Karkat's life, he doesn't feel like a complete failure.

Until he loses Terezi.

He spent the next week locked in his respite block, first blaming Vriska and her rash behavior, but then realizing that, honestly, he should have seen it coming. He should have known how Vriska would have reacted, and he should have fucking known the trap they were facing. He should have kissed her goodbye.

Now, when he closes his eyes, he thinks of her. When he opens them again to stare at his plans and to work, he still thinks of her. He sees her grin and hears her laugh and hates himself more and more every day.

Karkat understands Vriska a little better now. He finds himself taking more and more dangerous missions, and despite Sollux's worries that he's going to wind up dead, and despite how much the resistance needs him, he can't bring himself to care. Because it feels like a vital part of him is missing, and he'll never be whole again.

Today's mission is ridiculous, and honestly, Karkat wouldn't have allowed anyone else to take it. There's been some suspicions about Hypatia's ability to predict where and when rescue missions would strike, and Sollux was able to trace one of Hypatia's main planning centers. It's about as deep as you can get into the robozone, and despite all that Karkat's done in the past, he's partially convinced he won't make it out. That idea worries him less than he thought it would.

But it's where he finds her. Terezi. Thin and tiny and still so beautiful and without even bothering to check if the place has been trapped, he's calling her name and rushing to her side.