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.

He’s Dave motherfuckin’ Strider. He saved two—no, three, kind of—universes and has made out with aliens, okay? He has made time his bitch, died for his cause time and time again, and had an ultimate rap off with an Insane Clown Posse wannabe while the fucker was on a murder spree. He doesn’t give two shits what other people think of him.

Equius grew tired of the solitude of his workshop and decided to venture out to the castle that appeared in his bubble in search of the company of another. What he found was far from what he could have ever expected.

The problem is that you’re at the mercy of a useless, outmoded, ass-backwards mess of a biological process. The drones are gone. They’re never coming again. But your body sure thinks they are. It was— You wouldn’t say it was fine, but it was at least tolerable for a while. Realistically speaking, there was always a reasonable (ninety-nine percent) chance that you’d be culled the first time you tried to supply the drones with a pail, and you’ve been bracing yourself to deal with this since you pupated, for fuck’s sake. It feels like a kick to the shame gloves when your body betrays you and decides, whoops, no, it’s time to be all about filling pails for the glory of the empire.

Why the Beforan equivalent of yourself didn't appear here, you're not sure, though you suspect it has something to do with direct and indirect transference and the extent to which each of you had contact with game code prior to this remix of the universe; the Ancestors from Alternia had vague memories of being their Beforan selves, so both versions re-instanced, but as far as you know you're the only version of Sollux Captor the game was aware of. Poor Sollux, you jeer internally, all alone in the world. If you were to quadrant yourself, you're not sure whether self-hate or self-pity would be the dominant emotion, but either way, you're getting off on it. God, you make yourself sick. You hold your bulge like you're trying to restrain it, but who the fuck are you kidding. It wraps around your fingers, both tendrils snaking and coiling harder the more you try to will them to stop, like don't-think-of-a-trunkbeast, and you rub at them distractedly because you can't stand not to. Sollux Captor, system architect of the new universe, reduced to thinking with his bulge by two copies of his ancestor being obnoxious at each other. Fuck your hot life.

In which Karkat Vantas' roommate, Dave "straight as a line of coke" Strider, discovers the joys of prostate stimulation. Again. And again. And again.