After three years out of contact, John and Karkat can finally talk again. The conversation doesn't go quite the way they were expecting. Now the three weeks it will take the golden ship to match velocities with the asteroid seem like three million. Why are the laws of physics so unkind to desperate teenaged boys? [an antidote to sadstuck! if this is not the fluffiest, most sentimental xenoporn ever written, i will eat my writekind specibus.]

Karkat has been acting strange lately -- calm, unflappable, and sometimes even smiling dreamily at nothing -- and while it's something of a respite from his usual yelling, it's gone on long enough the others are concerned. They make vague plans to find out just what the hell is going on, but John, as the only person who can still get under Karkat's skin, decides on a direct approach... and discovers some very interesting things indeed about his favorite shouty troll and his unnerving moirail.

John is one of eight mech pilots heroically protecting Earth from an alien invasion. Pretty easy on the moral choices. See evil monster from space, kill evil monster from space. Only then he actually meets one of them face to face.

Those fucking humans. You remember. They won. They won everything. They even won you. Won all of you back from your dead-end fucking universe and took you with them into their reality-spraining victory. Cheating nookstains didn’t even fight; they won by ‘shenanigans’, that peculiarly human trick of winning-by-not-playing. And in that inside-out, backwards way of theirs, they never even considered keeping all the spoils for themselves.

Once Karkat figures out the trick to getting John's attention, it's all smooth sailing from there.

Arson Clinic engages in a nerdy rap battle with Lil Cal while stagehand Karkat smokes in an alley behind the venue and hates life. Meanwhile, homeless punk John Egbert goes on a quest for a little rubber alien.... AND THEN THEY ALL ROCK.

prompt runs: Bad End AU where all the trolls and kids are together on the asteroid behind the Veil. So the facility they have there has tons of weird machines and stuff. John and Karkat for some reason are exploring some parts no one's been in yet and through. Cue some tripping/curious button pressing whatever, so long as john someone gets zapped by some sort of crazy dna altering device and whoa! Suddenly troll!John. And Karkat has to help him deal with the new changes (Horn sensitivity and troll anatomy being fairly different from human anatomy) , even though it he bitches about it the ENTIRE time. There are sexy results at some point. Bonus - He ends up with a fairly high ranking blood type which reaaally pisses Karkat off.

Karter Vantas loses his bus pass and gets a couple of quarters from some random guy, who turns out to be mind-blowingly annoying. To cope with his fiery rage, Karter posts a long-winded, colorful rant on the Missed Connections section of craigslist, and then puts it out of his mind. What ends up happening is the very last thing he ever could have expected: he gets a response.