thearena | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who| Karkat + Chibi Usa, Karkat + Signless, Karkat + YOU?
What| Karkat makes his first kill and meets his ancestor, among other things.
Where| Main Street USA, elsewhere?
When| Week Six
Warnings/Notes| murder, blood, kids killing kids

Karkat's been in the arena for an hour, maybe two. It's the crowning glory to an unbelievably shitty night, which began with him and his friends fighting the Black King and ended with a bunch of weird hornless aliens shoving him into a tube and sending him into a death match. The part in the middle where that demon-barkbeast-carapace-thing destroyed the door into their new universe just before Karkat slipped into unconsciousness hadn't helped either.

He's managed to pick up a few things via breaking into some of the little commerce hives that line the thoroughfare leading up to the big yellow horn-shaped cavity. Nothing that great, though. Certainly no weapons. The large spool of grey thread might come in handy once he can find a needle, but until then...

Well. When Karkat manages to score some more supplies, he'll figure more shit out. He's taken his cloak off, figuring that if nothing else he can use it as a makeshift garrotte for now, and waits in the dark spaces between buildings, hoping to get the jump on someone. Preferably someone with supplies.

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"Then you do have value and I will gladly count you as an ally. Until such time as we are the last three left or other forces take us. Well met... Signless."

He doesn't like the sound of his new ally's name, but he knows he needs knowledge now as much as he needs a weapon and a steady source of food. This will be advantageous for all of them.

Karkat breathes out a sigh of relief. "Good," he says. "Great." He'll just have to hope someone else gets Cuthbert before the alliance is dissolved, because he sure as fuck doesn't feel up to taking him down--and Signless is not going to be any help in that regard.

Damn straight he's not, and that's never going to change as far as he's concerned.

"Very good. You too, Cuthbert." It's a strange name, but it sounds out to about eight letters in his estimation, so it's not too strange. He shuffles his upper body out of the sleeping bag -- his shoulder is still smeared with blood, though it's hard to see against his black clothing now that it's dry -- and reaches over to the bundle of supplies. He unwraps it and pulls out an orange.

"We can share it. To celebrate."

"A fine gesture, say thankya."

Cuthbert is fairly hungry, he's been more concerned with killing someone and taking what they had then finding much for himself. He has a decent stick and a general knowledge of the area to show for the few hours he's been here. Not the most impressive stash, but he had some ideas he would run by his new team soon.

"How are you at digging?"

Karkat shrugs. "I'm okay at it. I don't know how good Signless will be with his wound. Why, are we going to make a trap?"

Very diplomatically, Signless doesn't ask if the trap is for catching food or catching other tributes.

"I could dig, if you needed me to dig, but I might not be able to do it for long." He shrugs his injured shoulder to indicate why as he unpeels the orange and hands out equal chunks.

"More than one, if I have my way with it. Mayhap you can keep watch, we may make more noise than we'd like digging and covering the pits."

It is for the best that he doesn't ask. Bert takes the orange pieces gratefully and eats them slowly to make the taste last.

"I will see what I can do about catching us something more to eat."

"Yeah," says Karkat. "That'll work." He's nibbling slowly on his own orange as well. "So. What kind of alien are you, anyway? I've never seen anything like you in the mandatory schoolfeedings."

"I've seen quackbeasts," Signless offers. "They might be easy to trap."

And when Karkat asks what kind of alien Cuthbert is, he nods eagerly. "I've met a few others of your species -- I assume they're of your species -- and you're very unusual, even if you're all remarkably trolloid."

He doesn't mention that the way he knows about other alien races is because the government of his home planet can't content itself with just enslaving and brutalizing its own people and likes to do it to other planets as well.

The term 'quackbeasts' is far too amusing to Cuthbert and he laughs at it, even if he knows what Signless means.

The other questions are more puzzling than amusing, he isn't sure how to describe it to someone unfamiliar with humans as a whole.

"I'm human, pure threaded, no mutie in me. I've no way else to describe it, we're the only ones about where I'm from. I should ask the same of thee, you call yourself 'troll' but I cannot believe you're the sort to live in caves and under bridges."

Karkat winces at the word 'mutie.' He lets his eyes meet Signless' briefly, hoping the adult troll isn't stupid enough to tell Cuthbert about his blood.

"Why the fuck would we do there? We live in hives, of course." Honestly then compels him to correct himself. "Okay, fine, one of my friends lives in a cave, but she's not exactly what you'd call normal. We're the dominant species on our planet too." He scowls. "And you still haven't explained what the fuck a son is. Or a tet."

Signless doesn't wince like Karkat does. He's been a mutant all his life and past life too, and a visible mutant thanks to his eyes for most of that, so no he longer really cares if people know. That's the whole idea he's fighting for, isn't it? That people will one day know about his mutation and maybe not care about it, at least not enough to want to murder him on the spot for it.

"I've slept under bridges, before. It's not very comfortable."

Bert finishes his orange with a smile. It wouldn't bother him to know these two were mutants, since he had assumed that from the start considering the way they look. As long as they're not currently after his blood, it doesn't matter what they are.

"A 'son' is the name for a boy born to a man and woman. I've no better way to describe it. You called the one who cared for you a lusus... but I might call that 'mother' or 'father' and they would call me 'son' in return.

As for a 'tet' I might call what we've made ourselves a tet. We are working toward a common goal together and we have agreed to make our collective safety a priority."

Cuthbert is still rolling some other things around in his head and he can't help but ask at this point. And it's not in judgement, merely curiosity. Well, curiosity and the chance to bring back one hell of a story to tell people at home.

"Are you insects? Do you sting or bite or swarm? I know no one else who lives in a hive and starts life as grubs."

"Of course we're insects," Karkat says, rolling his eyes. The word duh remains unsaid but it's implied. "What the hell are you--a mammal?" He snickers, then sobers up because it occurs to him that Cuthbert might very well be a mammal, no matter how troll-shaped he was.

"We bite," Karkat says after a moment. "We don't sting though. I guess you could call it swarming when the imperial armed forces go into battle." He looks at the floor, away from Signless and Cuthbert. "Not that there's probably any of those left," he adds under his breath.

He guesses that Cuthbert would call him and his friends a 'tet.' Fuck, he misses them. Even the annoying assholes--and really, they all were annoying assholes. But they were his annoying assholes.

"So okay, by 'born to' them I'm guessing you mean that the male and the female were the ones contributing the genetic material. Why is it just for males? Is there another word for female sons? Are there more words for when two males contribute the genetic material or two females?"

Edited 2013-05-03 18:26 (UTC)

"How would you even keep track of that, though?" Signless asks. "If they all wind up in a slurry, there would be no way to know." Because humans clearly come from a genetic slurry. That's how that works.

"I have a mother, but she chose me after I was hatched like a lusus would, so that's different, I think."

Sorry for blowing your mind, Karkat.

"A female 'son' would be a 'daughter'. And there's no word for the offspring of two men or two women because such things don't result in children." He's blushing now, this conversation has gone way off the rails.

"There's not much mixing up to do, so long as you have trust in your wife. A man will kindle a child inside her and she will birth it. Those who kindle it will care for it, much simpler than choosing which child of a litter you will love."

He's feeling the need to defend his pride as a mammal. It is something of a sore spot to him, considering the way his father talks about him sometimes. There's love there, but hidden under a lot of disappointment and reluctant acceptance.

"Does that mean there are grubs among you who aren't chosen to be cared for?"

"Well yeah," Karkat says, "but those usually die in the brooding cavern trials by the time we get our lusi--and we don't actually get those as grubs, but after we pupate into wigglers and lose our extra... limbs..."

It's then that his brain finishes actually processing what Cuthbert said about how humans reproduce and he stares at the human boy with an expression of horror.

"Wait--did you just say human grubs grown inside the females? That's disgusting."

"And how does pailing between two males and two females not result in grubs-- in children? It's all the same sort of stuff, I don't see any real reason it wouldn't be possible." He thinks of what Porrim would say about a society in which females exclusively have to have grubs growing inside of them and smiles, just a little, because he's pretty sure she'd rain righteous feminine fury down on the entire human species.

Something occurs to him. It's nothing something he really wants to know, but he can't help asking.

"How do they... get out?"

"How is it any more disgusting than losing extra limbs as you grow? The child passes from the mother safely after she carries it to full growth. We lose less grubs that way." Cuthbert makes a gesture to try and explain what he means by 'passes'. It's probably more graphic than they would want.

"How are your kind... made? If they aren't carried by a male or a female how do they develop?"

Karkat's horrified and disgusted expression has not left him. Has, in fact, only become more and more entrenched on his face.

"From eggs laid by the mother grub," he manages to squeak out. "How-- how does it pass from her? Where does it come out from?"

Oh, no, he's so sorry he asked.

It can't be the nook. That's not how nooks work. But it can't be the waste chute, because he doesn't even want to contemplate that. So instead, he chooses to clarify what Karkat's saying a bit.

"What he means is that we provide genetic material to the mother grub, in a pail or bucket, and she mixes it together to form the slurry from which her eggs are laid, with troll grubs inside. No one carries anything. Except pails."

Lord help him, he's babbling about buckets. How did they get from happily sharing oranges to this. How did this happen.

"It comes out the same place it goes in... and it just now occurs to me that the good Insect Lord did not gift your kind with a prick. Which means you've no place to put it and all your confusion makes sense."

This is mind blowing. Next to his guns that's the most important part of him and the idea of a whole species that will never know that pleasure is almost sad.

"Dare I ask what you carry in the pails?"

"Signless told you," Karkat whispers. "Genetic material."

He doesn't know if he wants to ask what a prick is. This is the most mortifying conversation he's had in his life. And that includes every single conversation with Terezi.

Signless nods in affirmation. "Genetic material. The stuff that gets mixed together in the slurry to create grubs. I don't know about pricks, but all trolls have a bulge and a nook that secrete genetic material. During mating it's collected in the pail, so none of it's wasted."

Personally, he's not a fan of pails or what they represent, and given that he lived his life outside of society the drones never came to him and so he never really had cause to use one. Besides, lugging pails all over Alternia while on the run just wasn't a priority when more important things like food needed to be brought along instead. And they're a symbol of the Alternian Empire's oppression of sexuality and attempts to turn it into an obligation on pain of death rather than a right to be enjoyed, but that's not the point.

"So what you're saying, if I'm understand this right, is that... you use female humans as pails?"

Porrim would have a fucking field day.

"I fear you're saying you use pails as women."

This is painful, genuinely painful. And that is coming from someone who had to learn about sex from Vannay. He doesn't even want to go into 'bulge' and 'nook'. But after a moment he ends up laughing, this is far too ridiculous.

"I suppose it saves on the mess, aye?"