NOTE: EDITED :33
so here's the first chapter of my homestuck fanfiction! It isn't exactly homestuck or humanstuck. Its mainly about a group of college teenagers who love homestuck and have personalities similar to those of a certain homestuck character. You will notice that each of my character's first names correspond with their troll's last name.
This chapter is dedicated to my moirail, DamonKrueger, because he's the one who got me into homestuck in the first place :33
E N J O Y !
the picture is of Vantera :)
CHAPTER ONE: THE SEER OF WORDS
A young woman walked quickly across campus. She had short, boyish chocolate brown hair with caramel streaks in it. Her long bangs hung in her eyes, but she didn’t seem to mind. Her sharp, blueish purple eyes perceived everything around her, particularly the words she saw and heard. Her mind took the words and captchalogued them for later. A loose piece of paper slipped out of one of her notebooks and fluttered away in the wind. On the paper were these words;
My name is Vantera Gold, and I am a Seer of Words.
The girl didn’t notice the piece of paper, but someone else did. A pale skinned hand reached up and plucked the paper out of the air, tucking it safely into another notebook as the owner of the hand trailed slowly after the girl.
This person was a young man with raven black hair that sat in a messy heap on his head. His bangs hung low over his eyes, hiding their royal purple color. He never walked quickly anywhere, and enjoyed spending time outside, admiring the miracles of life. The girl he was following often called him her human Gamzee. He often called her his miraculous Karkat.
The girl turned around, a scowl on her face.
“Hurry up, Fuckass,” she called back to him. “We’re gonna be late.”
“Awe, chill the fuck out, Gold,” he said in his typical sing-song voice. “We still got ten motherfucking minutes. That’s plenty of motherfucking time.”
The girl rolled her eyes and waited impatiently for him, her eyes flickering restlessly around. Anyone who didn’t know her would think she was nervous, but the girl was anything but. She was merely taking note of every word fluttering about in the air.
It was why she never walked slowly. She hated taking notice of every damn word.
Her friend sighed and sped up his walk, and they fell into a compromising stroll. He was walking much faster than he preferred and she was walking much slower. This was how it typically went as they walked to class.
The two friends had every class together, because the Gamzee boy never took any notes and would fail the class without Vantera’s help. Because of Vantera’s tendency to memorize and remember every word she saw and heard, she was incredibly smart.
Vantera and Gamzee slipped into the lecture hall with plenty of time to spare, and chose two seats near the back of the room. They always sat in back, because everyone else sat in the front. Vantera hated physical contact with anyone. Because of her curse, the instant her skin made contact with anyone else’s, she had their entire life laid out before her like a book. The way it began, and the way it would end. And then she could never look at that person the same again. Gamzee was like her bodyguard. He was the barrier that stood between her and the rest of the student body.
Gamzee was actually pretty well liked. No one knew about his tendency towards instability, because he never let them see. Vantera was the only one who had ever seen her best friend go insane.
Gamzee was into music, and he was even in his own band. Vantera wrote the lyrics for all of their songs, but nobody ever knew, because she didn’t boast about it. Gamzee played guitar, and his other best friend played bass. They had found a pair of twins who were really good at keyboard and drums, and together, they were the Dark Carnival. Gamzee’s favorite song was Welcome to the Dark Carnival, because that was the first one Vantera had written for them. It was the song that got them their name, and it was the song that made them famous.
He had tried to make Vantera take credit for the song, but she point blank refused. He stopped bugging her about taking credit for her work after that.
Gamzee put his headphones in and leaned back against the chair, shutting his eyes. As the professor started his lecture, Vantera took out her notebook and started to write. It looked almost like she was taking notes, but she was really just writing. She never took notes until after the lecture. Then, she wrote down the most important things for Gamzee to study. If she wrote the lecture word for word, Gamzee would never read it. Sometimes, she would even translate the notes into a song so that Gamzee could remember them easier.
Gamzee took out the piece of paper that had fallen out of Vantera’s notebook earlier. He smiled at the words and then wrote something down beneath them.
My name is Makaera Krome, and I am a Bard of Rage.
He then doodled two symbols on the page: one that looked like a serpentine ‘S’ and another that looked like a creepy clown face. He smiled at his drawing and then passed it to Vantera. She looked down at it and recognized it as a page from one of her notebooks. Gamzee was always catching her stray papers and then giving them back to her at random times, so this was nothing new for her.
This picture, however, made her smile. It had both of their names and symbols together on one page, and that was something magical to Vantera. Even though she called him names and treated him like shit, Makaera was her best friend, and she loved him with all her heart.
~
After class, they walked back to their dorm together, Vantera a little ways ahead of Makaera. They didn’t live together, but they might as well have. Makaera lived in the room right next to Vantera, and he was over in her room so much that he virtually lived there.
When they got to her room, Makaera flopped down on the couch and picked up his guitar that he had left there that morning. Vantera’s roommate was still in class, so they had the room to themselves. Vantera picked up a large book that was sitting on the floor, opened it, and began to read.
Whenever she wasn’t writing, Vantera was almost always reading. She loved books, because they were the only things she couldn’t absorb information from just by touching or glancing at them. She had to actually open them and turn the pages. Granted, she read them very quickly, because she saw all the words on the page in one glace, but she still had to read them.
“Welcome to the Carnival,
You’ll never want to leave.
You can’t escape this evil hell.
We’ve trapped you here, you see.”
Makaera’s voice flooded the room as he began to play his favorite song. Vantera continued to read her book, but she heard every word that Makaera sang. She loved his voice. It was so unique, rising and falling in a whimsical manner.
“A clown with violent eyes;
A ride to touch the skies;
A mirror with evil glare;
A girl with deadpan stare.
This is the Dark Carnival,
Where evil stalks you all.
It haunts you in the dead of night;
It feeds upon your fright.
Welcome to the Carnival,
You’ll never want to leave.
You can’t escape this evil hell.
We’ve trapped you here, you see.”
Vantera closed her eyes, listening to the song. All at once, it was as if the world had gone silent. She could still hear the words, but there was no more of the clutter that she often saw and heard from the rest of the world. It was just her in her head. Sweet, blissful silence.
She probably fell asleep for a while, because the next thing she knew, Vantera was laying on the couch, her head on Makaera’s abdomen, and he was petting her hair, running his fingers threw it. Makaera was the only one who Vantera could stand physical contact with. When he touched her, his whole life was still laid out for her like a book, but it was a book that Gamzee had written, and it made no sense. It was as if pages had been ripped out of the book and purple ink had been smeared all over the pages. There wasn’t even an end because the whole back of the book had been torn away and thrown god knows where. It was completely unlike contact with any other human, and that was why Vantera tolerated it.
The gentle tugging on her hair was slightly rhythmic, and it was very soothing. Vantera’s eyes fluttered closed again. This time, there was no music to fill her ears, just the gentle hum of the TV and Makaera’s steady breathing.
Vantera hadn’t realized how tired she was. When was the last time she had slept? She couldn’t remember. There were dark circles under her eyes, looking like bruises against her pale skin.
“You fucking purr in your sleep,” Makaera said.
“Do I?” Vantera mumbled softly.
“Yeah,” he said. “It sounds sort of like this.”
Makaera made a rumbling, humming sound in the back of his throat that sounded exactly like a cat purring. It made his abdomen vibrate gently beneath Vantera’s head, only adding to the comfort she was feeling.
Despite how comfortable and sleepy she was, Vantera opened one eye to peer up at Makaera. He was grinning down at her, his purple eyes visible beneath his raven bangs.
“You sound like a motherfucking cat,” he continued. “Its motherfucking adorable.”
“Adorable?” Vantera scoffed. “More like, adorabloodthirsty.”
Makaera laughed, and Vantera couldn’t help the small twitch that lifted the corners of her lips into a tiny smile. This sent Makaera into another fit of giggles that made Vantera’s smile just a little bit bigger. She almost never smiled, and so Makaera considered it a beautiful miracle when she did.
Vantera rubbed her eyes, realizing that she had fallen asleep with her contacts in. Now her eyes were sore and itchy. Despite the fact that she really didn’t want to move, she got up and moved to take her contacts out.
“Goddamn, fucking contacts,” she muttered as she took out the little contact case and cleaner.
Makaera watched her curiously. He almost never saw her without her contacts in, and she always wore a pair of shades when she wasn’t wearing contacts, so it was just as much a miracle to see her true eye color as it was to see her smile. Vantera’s eyes were extremely sensitive to the light, so she had to wear dark blue, tinted contacts or sunglasses to protect them.
Vantera carefully took her contacts out and put them away. She squeezed her eyes shut at the sudden brightness of the room.
“Makaera?” She said tentatively.
Makaera got up and turned the knob on the wall. Their friend, Captor, had installed it so lights in Vantera’s room would take on the appearance of when she was wearing her contacts. It wasn’t so dark that normal people couldn’t see, but it was dark enough so that it wouldn’t hurt her eyes.
Vantera opened her eyes and turned around, letting out a sigh of relief when the light didn’t burn her eyes. Looking at her, Makaera could see his best friend’s beautiful red eyes, shining brightly in the dim lighting. He loved her eyes, but she hated them.
Makaera took a step towards her and his long legs closed the distance between them easily. He put a hand on her cheek and tilted her face upwards so he could look into her eyes. He towered over her by at least a foot.
“Your eyes are so motherfucking beautiful,” he said softly. “I wish you didn’t have to motherfucking hide them.”
Vantera rolled her eyes.
“Can you imagine what people’s reactions would be if they saw my true eye color?” she asked. “They would think I’m even more of a freak than they already do.”
Makaera frowned down at her.
“People think you’re a freak?”
Vantera sighed. She hadn’t meant to say that. Makaera never noticed the looks people gave her or heard the words they said and wrote about her, but she did. They all called her an emo bitch.
Vantera supposed she deserved the name. She was a bitch to everyone, and she was a bit of a goth. She wore black and white striped arm warmers, black and grey striped shirts, black pants, and black lace up boots. The only bit of color on any of her clothes was the small, red Cancer symbol that she wore on all of her shirts.
Makaera was also a bit of a goth, with his weird clown makeup. He always wore a purple t-shirt and a black zip up hoodie with a big, purple Capricorn symbol in the middle and the sleeves rolled up, displaying the tattoos on his right arm. However, Makaera was always happy and smiling, and he was nice to everyone, whereas Vantera was always angry and scowling, and a real bitch to everyone.
“Vantera,” Makaera said, his fingers digging into her shoulders, “what pieces of shit lowbloods call you a motherfucking freak?”
Vantera could see the barely controlled rage in his face now, and it scared her. She was the only one who could deal with him when he was like this, but it still scared her to death. Any second, he could overpower her and kill her. It was not a safe job.
“Makaera…?” Vantera managed to squeak out.
“Tell me, Vantera,” he commanded, his voice becoming a growl. “Who?”
“Makaera!” she gasped. “Makaera, please… please, calm down.”
Makaera was beyond reason though and his eyes showed it.
“WHO??” he roared in terrifying anger.
Vantera wanted nothing more than to yank herself out of his too tight grip and hide herself in the corner, where she knew he couldn’t get to her. She was so terrified. However, she swallowed her fear and wrapped her tiny arms around his thin waist, pressing her face—now stained with blood red tears—into his chest. Vantera dug her nails into his back, hugging him as though her life depended on it. Makaera was screaming now, screaming with rage. She could imagine his painted face twisting gruesomely and his unnaturally pointed teeth showing as he opened his mouth wide and roared.
“Hush,” Vantera said, tracing his symbol on his back over and over again with her fingers. “Be still, angered one. Be calm; be gentle; be free.”
Slowly, Makaera quieted. His breaths came out in ragged growls and he made noises like a wild animal, but the familiar pattern being drawn on his back, and the words being spoken in his ear were comforting to him.
“Don’t let the voices control you,” Vantera said. “You’re stronger than them. Hush. Be still, angered one. Be calm; be gentle; be free.”
Slowly, Makaera’s arms enfolded the tiny girl that was holding him. His growls subsided into a purr, and he fell into a gentle sleep.
Despite the fact that he was twice her size, Vantera was able to hold Makaera up quite easily when he fell limp in her arms. She gently navigated him to the couch and laid him down. The royal purple throw blanket that was draped over the back of the couch was there for times like these, when Makaera slept over in Vantera’s room.
“Good night, my little Gamzee,” she said, kissing his forehead.
The skin to skin contact revealed again the book that always came. This time, however, there was something new. A single page, obviously from a later part in the book, fluttered down to take its place at the end of what was visible. The words were written in gold ink, a new color that Vantera had never seen in Makaera’s book before.
“One day she smiled up at him, something that he considered rare, and beautiful, and, yes, miraculous. Makaera leaned down and kissed her, because there was nothing else to do.”
Vantera pulled away and the book vanished. She looked down at Makaera, sleeping peacefully, and wondered who the page was about. In her heart, though, she already knew.
~
Makaera woke up late in the morning, and for the first few minutes, he had no recollection of the night before at all. He laid there, wondering why he was still in Vantera’s room, and suddenly it hit him like a book being thrown full force at the back of his head—he would know the feeling. Vantera was known to throw books during her own fits of rage.
Makaera sat up with a start, the purple blanket falling off of him. He looked around at the small cubby where Vantera’s desk was situated under her lofted bed.
Vantera was sitting there, tapping away at her laptop, a coffee in her hand.
“Morning, shithead,” Vantera said softly, not looking away from her computer.
“Hey! Look who’s finally up!” another voice crowed, and Makaera looked up to see Vantera’s roommate, Pyra, peering down at him from her lofted bed.
Pyra was wearing bright red sunglasses that hid her grey colored eyes. Pyra was blind, which was why it worked so well for her and Vantera to be roommates. She still got around as easily as if she could see, though, and nobody was really sure how she did it.
She hated Makaera with a passion, and Makaera hated her right back. The funny thing was, even though they hated each other, they often shared friendly and intimate moments like these that left the viewer extremely confused. It was a love-hate relationship.
Pyra hopped down from her bed onto the couch, narrowly avoiding landing on Makaera. Her reddish brown hair hung down to her shoulders where it curled slightly at the tips. She was wearing a red t-shirt with a teal long sleeved shirt underneath. Her jeans were low-cut and hung loosely on her hips.
From her spot on the couch, Pyra pointed to the bulletin board hanging on the wall by their heads.
“Check out what me and Tera did,” she said with a grin.
“Leave me out of it,” Vantera said in an uninterested tone. “You know full well that I didn’t do anything.”
“You didn’t stop me!” Pyra retorted.
She and Vantera continued their friendly banter, but Makaera turned his eyes to the bulletin board. A new paper was pinned to it, among the many pictures of their friends. It was the same paper that had fallen out of Vantera’s notebook the day before. Now, there was another line added to it, below the picture of Makaera’s Bard of Rage symbol.
My name is Pyra Fire, and I am a Knight of Mind.
Below that was a picture of Pyra’s symbol. It was colored in to be teal, and it appeared she had colored Makaera’s symbol purple and Vantera’s red. Makaera smiled faintly. There was a lot of space left on the page. He wondered if they could fit all their friends on there.
“So what do you think?” Pyra asked eagerly
Makaera grinned at her.
“I was thinking we should all up an’ motherfucking get all our friends to motherfucking write on it,” he said.
Pyra squealed and jumped off the couch, doing some sort of happy dance.
“See! See! Maka thinks so too!!” she shouted joyfully at Vantera.
Vantera gave them both a grumpy glare before returning to whatever she was doing on her computer.
Pyra was now dancing with one of her hand sewn stuffed dragons. This one was a white one with red eyes, and it was Pyra’s favorite. Makaera remembered how he had once stolen it and hung it with a rope out his window. Pyra had been furious.
“Holy shit…” Vantera suddenly said, staring at her computer screen with wide eyes.
“What?” Makaera and Pyra said in unison, much to their dislike.
“Holy motherfucking SHIT!” was Vantera’s only reply.
“What?” Makaera pressed.
Vantera finally turned to look at them.
“You are exactly like Gamzee,” she said to Makaera.
“What do you all up an’ motherfucking mean?” Makaera asked, confused.
Of course he was like Gamzee. Gamzee was the silly, lighthearted clown of the group who was always high on faygo and sopor. That was Makaera, only he was always high on faygo and weed.
Vantera only shook her head and turned back to the screen.
“Vantera…?” Makaera asked.
“Keep reading Homestuck,” Vantera told him, not turning away. “You’ll find out.”
Makaera groaned.
“Why can’t you just motherfucking tell me?”
“It’s something you just gotta see for yourself, shithead,” Vantera replied.
“What part are you at?” Pyra asked curiously.
“I’m lost somewhere in the fucking chaos of Act Five, Act Two,” Vantera said.
“Ooh I’m just starting Act Five, Act Two,” Pyra said with excitement.
She promptly opened up her laptop and dove straight into the interactive comic, and was soon lost in it, leaning close to the screen as though it would help her see better, even though she was blind as a bat. Makaera thought she might have figured out how to see the way Terezi did, because it sure seemed like it.
Makaera sighed. He really wanted to get out his laptop and read Homestuck so he could find out what Vantera was talking about. He had gotten so far behind the rest of the group these past few months, mainly because he had been practicing a new song with his band. He had no idea how Vantera was able to keep up with all their homework and still have time to read Homestuck. He didn’t even have time to do homework!
There was no point in getting out his laptop now, because he and Vantera would be leaving for their first class soon. This one was an Art class, and it was their earliest class of all of them, starting at one forty and going until two forty. Their latest class was also today, starting at four ten and going until five ten. Makaera and Vantera were practically nocturnal, so they always scheduled their classes in the afternoons.
Art was both Vantera and Makaera’s favorite class. Vantera liked it because it lacked words. Makaera liked it because there weren’t any dates or times or names he had to memorize. He was also an extremely talented artist, so that only added to his enthusiasm.
Vantera glanced at the clock.
“We better get going,” she said, closing her laptop with a snap and packing it away in her book bag.
She gathered up a bundle of notebooks in her arms and slipped her shoes on.
Makaera swung his long legs off the couch, stood up, and stretched. There was a mirror on the wall opposite him, and he grimaced at his reflection. His black eyeliner was smeared around his eyes, giving him a slightly deranged clown look. His white cover-up had been rubbed off the night before and his scar was easily visible. Running from his left eyebrow to his right jaw, was a single scar.
He had gotten it when he was really young. His father was in one of his own fits of insanity, and Makaera had just been in the way. His father grabbed a kitchen knife off the counter and cut Makaera’s face open with it, laughing maniacally as he did. Makaera had fled the house in a blind panic, and somehow he ended up on Vantera’s doorstep.
Vantera had opened the door, taken one look at Makaera’s blood streamed face and screamed for her dad. Vantera’s dad had taken him to the hospital where the doctor’s stitched up his face. By the time morning had come, Makaera’s father was sitting in an insane asylum, and Makaera was scheduled to live in a foster home.
Vantera had remained his best friend through that period though. She didn’t care that his face was mutilated by a hideous gash. She had still cared about him.
The skin didn’t protrude anymore, because it was a very old scar, so it was fairly easy to hide with makeup. Now, however, there wasn’t time to run back to his room and reapply makeup, and Makaera didn’t like the idea of going out in public with his scar showing.
However, Vantera seemed to have read his mind, for suddenly she was there, gently smearing the white paint over his face and quickly reapplying his eyeliner and lipstick. When she pulled away, Makaera saw the grinning white and black clown face he had adopted, staring back at him in the mirror. He smiled at his reflection, and the painted smiled twisted creepily. Makaera loved his Gamzee makeup.
“Let’s go, fuckass,” Vantera said, speeding out the door without bothering to wait for him.
Makaera grabbed his iPod and stuffed it in his pocket before departing the room after Vantera.
~
“Hey, Gold?” Makaera asked, making her look up from her notebook, where she was busily writing something.
“What?” Vantera snapped in an irritable tone.
They were sitting in art class. Vantera was writing in her notebook, as usual, while Makaera was painting her. She usually ended up being his model, because she sucked at drawing. Unfortunately, this didn’t help her pass the class. Vantera had ended up dropping it, but she still came with Makaera anyways.
“Do you ever motherfucking wonder what we’re motherfucking doing here?” Makaera asked, not taking his eyes off his painting.
Vantera glared at him over the top of her notebook.
“We’re going to class to get a fucking education, shithead,” she snapped.
“No, I mean… why are we here? On earth? What’s our motherfucking purpose?”
“Man, I don’t fucking know,” Vantera said, sounding exasperated. “Why do you always ask me these things, fuckass? I don’t know the mysteries of the universe.”
“Well, what do you motherfucking think?” Makaera asked, meeting her eyes over the top of the canvas. “Don’t you have a motherfucking opinion?”
Vantera was silent for a moment, and Makaera could see the she was thinking pretty hard. The irritated expression that she always made sure to have on her face and smoothed into calm contemplation. She idly tapped her pencil against the side of her face.
After a long silence, she said, “I think someone is messing with us. They put us here on earth just to see what we would do. It’s nothing but a fucking game.”
The irritable glare was back.
Makaera sighed. He had figured she might say something like that.
“Alright, bro,” he said, accidentally letting the masculine word slip out.
When he realized his mistake, he glanced up at Vantera again, expecting to see a frown, but she just looked curiously shocked.
Then, the corners of her lips twitched into an almost smile and Makaera knew they were okay.
He went back to painting.
After another long silence, Vantera spoke again.
“You can call me ‘bro’ if you want, shithead.”
what did you think? I know it was probably confusing in the beginning because I was calling Vantera "Gold" and Makaera "Gamzee" but its just one of those things I do when I'm writing. I like to slowly introduce the character's name and don't actually start calling them by it until halfway through the chapter. lol.
I also really like this last scene between Makaera and Vantera, kaz its just really true to the characters of karkat and gamzee :33 I'm also really loving Pyra. she's turning out to be quite the character! Got any predictions for what happens next? Next chapter will introduce Makaera's band :33
Next update will hopefully be soon!
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XD