This Game Was Never Beta'd

Blasting through Karkat's front door, he tearfully opened fire on several of the ugly, useless landweller shit lying around before whisking himself up the stairs. His wails made it sound like a violent, blubbery ghost had taken a break from chilling with Aradia and made itself home. Home, of course, being Kar's coon which Eridan dove into after blasting several other items for good measure.

Then, when all else was quiet, a series of glubby cries began bubbling up from the sopor.

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Karkat had been preparing a cup of instant radiation unit noodles, comfortably swearing at the unit for burning them and totally unprepared for his front door to slam across the room in a solid ray of white light.  Dropping his bowl and equipping his sickle in the same, instinctual movement, he was half in a crouch when he realized the door -- and the other blasts of light flinging around his block *blowing his shit up* -- were coming from the screeching, wailing thing that vaguely resembled his moirail.  Who promptly flew past him, up the stairs, and slammed the door to his respiteblock.

Karkat froze, for a long minute, only moving when something hot and wet started soaking into his sock and realizing it was the grubdamned fucking noodles.  Cursing, he shoved the sickle back away and took the stairs at a heavy stomp, building up a good headwind of rage and snarling at a stray blastmark on the wall.  Kicking open the door, he looked around his fucked up repsiteblock before narrowing in on the coon and taking a deep, furious breath.

"WHAT IN THE SLURRY SHITTING WASTECHUTE OF THE MOTHERGRUB HAS CRAWLED INTO THE HOLLOWED OUT RIND YOU CALL A FUCKING SKULL AND DECIDED THAT THE BEST WAY TO DEAL WITH WHATEVER SELF-OBSESSED ADVENTURE INTO EGOTISM WE'RE HAVING TODAY WAS TRASHING MY PIECE OF SHIT HIVE AND COMPETING FOR ALTERNIA'S NEXT TOP HUNTEVISCORATOR?!??!?!!"

When he got close enough, he flung out his arm and fired a dazzling hope blast powerful enough to take out the whole wall, which it did. The side of Gam's hive exploded in a white flash as Eridan busted through in a spectacular display of wrath and vengeance. With a ball of hope still glowing in his hand, he whipped his head around and called out to the empty room. "Come out you cowwardly clowwn! Wwhy don't you brawwl wwith a proper highblood you wwaywward looney tune!"

Silence.

Eridan fanned out his earfins in an attempt to catch any sound lingering in the air, but he was only met with the eerie gust noise flowing out from the hole behind him. The breath he had kept locked in his lungs slowly wheezed past his bared fangs as he peered across disheveled floor. A struggle had obviously took place here, but there was no sign of life whatsoever. He prayed the fight was carried elsewhere, compelling himself forward in search of where it could have traveled.

The ball of light in his hand provided him adequate light to search each passing room he came across, illuminating block after block of empty pie tins and broken horns. His lungs started hurting again before he finally remembered to breathe, caring only to find his two quadrantmates and Terezi in this mess of subjuggaglo garbage. His efforts were beginning to prove futile, that was, until the light from his hand shone onto a splatter of red droplets strewn across a nearby wall.

Eridan's pusher stopped, his legs froze, and his lip started quivering as he began frantically assuring himself that the stains were not what they looked like. Try as he might to ignore it, he followed the trail down towards an ominous mound of something lying on the floor. Eridan swallowed. Surely it was just a pile of torn clothes that had been ripped off during the fight. Yes, clothes that happened to form the shape of a short little troll with horrible fashion sense, unkempt hair, candy red blood -

and little nubby horns.

Something indescribably heavy and unforeseen knocked him to the floor, his knees giving out and the ball of light disappearing from his hand. The only light illuminating the room emanated from the glowing balloons floating outside, mocking him and the ghastly sight that was splayed out before him like some terrible joke that he didn't get.

Like a dying salted slug, Eridan writhed over to the bloodied heap of flesh and clothes that he once knew as Karkat Vantas. The name stuck out in his head, seemingly hovering over him and the corpse below, but he couldn't make the connection. This dead body /could not/ be that of his beloved palemate. Not his fated diamond that he was destined to live out the end of his days with.

Yet as he glanced down at the face he once lovingly papped and kissed, Eridan took in the sight of the horrific expression of betrayal and pain staring back up at him, screaming "WHY ASSHOLE, WHY WEREN'T YOU HERE"

And then Eridan screamed, gathering up the lifeless body and hugging it against his heaving chest.

----------

Karkat finally dropped out of the gate onto the Land of Tents and Mirth, breathing heavily as he glanced around wildly and spotted Gamzee's hive again. Shoving his palmhusk back into his sylladex, he yanked out his standard issue sickles, the only weapons left in his specibus -- he'd dropped his real ones, like a fucking idiot, god, no wonder he'd died -- and started running for the structure. There was a new fucking hole in the roof, and one on the side, and no horrendous, gleeful honking going on, so he didn't even slow down as he took the blasted wall at a jump and started through the rooms. "TEREZI?! SOLLUX!?!? ERIDAN, ARE YOU FUCKING HERE YET?!?!"

Skidding to a stop at the entrance back into the main block, Karkat snapped his sickles up before even taking a look around. No Gamzee (oh, thank fuck, oh god). Neither his friend or matesprit, but the hole through the roof originated in here, looking clean and unmarked except where a big chunk of the ceiling was just gone, ripped away (psionically, please, shit). The only thing in the room besides garbage and blood was--

"Eridan--" Something welled up, steady and safe in the storm of worries and what ifs and where the fuck was everybody, and Karkat lowered his weapons half a foot. "Hey, did you see them, what the fuck, where are they, is Gamzee here? Did you kill him?"

Weapons dropping another inch, Karkat frowned and actually looked at what his moirail was huddled over, before promptly going ashy white and fighting down another sick wave of nausea. "Eridan??"