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.]

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.

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