maskormenacelogs | Everybody wants to rule the world

Why all the fuckin flags, Eridan had said to a woman straightening one above a doorway, and she'd given him a look like he'd just stomped on her favorite childhood pet. Fifteen minutes later, he'd long since stopped questioning anything in the place, settling instead for a dull, ambivalent approach to it all - he was alive, sure, and disoriented, and not dead, but that's all barely appreciated when he faces what's to come.

Because all he sees is Florida, starting all over again, government housing, and rows upon rows of cheery faces.

So instead of throwing the homicidal fit he knows is coming, Eridan instead finds one of those kitschy outdoor restaurants with the patio tables, sits down, and orders a lobster. Great big one, all the dressings, and it sucks down the last bit of paper money in his wallet, but he's either too dazed or too irate to care, barely touching the meal as he sits there and eyes the passing crowd. How Americana can the place even get? Is anybody aware of it? Is Norman Rockwell imitation one of the laws around here or something, because if it is, his problems don't just end at trans-universal uprooting.

"Fuckin' stupid," he mutters (to no one), tossing the hollowed out shell of a claw over his shoulder (at someone, he can hear them coming close enough for accident range). And in a tight circle around his seat - small, just small enough that someone could stagger through it and shrug it off as momentary weirdness - the good mood sputters out, replaced by the sort of hopeless sucking void befitting his mood.

If anybody comes within touching range of him, they'd better be crying.

She isn't crying, but there's a sullen sort of aura around her that ought to make Eridan perk up. She doesn't get hit by a claw shell, but she does hear Eridan muttering to himself like a sulking lunatic. It's enough to make her laugh. The first she's laughed, honestly, since her apartment building decided to stretch and take most of her belongings with it.

She's torn between approaching him and making his day worse or pretending like she doesn't know him at all.

She covers her mouth a free hand and forces her laughter to still in her throat. Maybe he hasn't noticed her at all, she thinks. Maybe she can walk away and pretend she hasn't been standing alone laughing for two minutes.

Unfortunately, after about a minute of muffled laughter playing in the distance, even Eridan picks up on it above the general crowd noise. If somehow prompted, he'd explain that it was because of his advanced sea dweller senses. In actuality, it's more like he's just really used to the sound of half-muffled laughter in his presence. So he slings an arm around the back of his chair and hauls himself around, fully expecting some noxious teenager ripe for intimidation (he's even got a croquet mallet threat worked out and everything).

He's not expecting Rose. But god, with this horrible and entirely undeserved cruel twist of paradox space's finicky fuckin wwhims, Eridan thinks, slathering on his haughtiest of derisive glances, he probably should have.

"Well, if it ain't the mawen a malarkey mysticism."

Shit, he'd better add a lip curl. There, nailed it.

She really wishes he hadn't, because she almost cracks up again. She has to cough to cover it up.

"Eridan, I wish I could say it surprises me to see you sulking."

She considers going to him. Sitting down and taking a piece of his lobster right off his plate and chewing as obnoxiously as she can. Her feet move before she realizes it; she sits down opposite him without invitation, but keeps her hands to herself. Honestly, it's nice just to sit down for a moment.

"I see you've made it out alive."

"You were expectin' somethin' less?" He starts out with the most important (offensive) thing (implication), automatically slouching forward in his seat as she sits, chin propped in his hand. "A brinesucker what can't surwiwe a little fuckin' apocalypse ain't the kind that sticks around this place for three years."

If he wasn't sulking before, which he was, now he's sulking. He seems completely unaware of the fact.

"And who the fuck says I'm sulkin'? This is some genuine reasonable reaction to bein' fuckin' trans-uniwersally uprooted." Another beat. He lifts himself a quarter inch, eyebrows knitting. "Did I say you could sit here?"

"No, but I won't be moving." She offers a bright, sardonic smile and slouches down in her seat. She gets comfy; crosses one leg over the other and regards him with a calculated stare. After a moment, she waves a waiter over, orders a jug of water and then: "They do say the cockroaches will survive any apocalypse. Congratulations on being the first to confirm the face."

She wishes he were at least ten times more disheveled. Sometimes life is just not fair.

"Also, you are presently giving a whole new dimension to sulking. I'm actually very impressed. Are you going to eat that?"

Unfortunately, Jenny Quantum lives by the creed that big girls don't fucking cry-- at least not where anyone can see them. Especially not unbearable trolls with unbearable scarves to match their unbearable personalities. It's probably some mixture of latent masochism and some desire for the comforting familiarity of antagonizing him that has Jenny approaching, helping herself to a seat not at, but on his table. Probably to be as obnoxious as possible.

It's not that she's ever been a particularly nice girl-- maybe when she was still little and wearing pigtails-- but something about Eridan Ampora tends to inspire her to be especially mean. Then again, it could always just be a bad mood.

She pauses to light a cigarette, exhaling a wisp of smoke when she greets him.

"Are you sulking?"

Eridan jumps when Jenny plants herself on his table, although he'll deny it all the way to the next apocalypse (whenever that is), expression instantly going from sour to sourer. Which is pretty impressive, considering he was already mid-pout. That brief surprise fading, he leans in to circle his arms over his plate protectively. He already doesn't want to eat; the last thing he needs is a mouthful of ashy shellfish, or the fallout of tossing it at the next person who thinks asking about his fins is at all okay.

"Are you tryin' to break my table?" he sneers, his slightly crooked glasses (thanks, nasty fall on his flawless face during the Atropos event) sliding further down his slightly crooked nose (thanks, being frequently punched in the face).

That's it, that's the comeback.

She pointedly arches an eyebrow at the way he quickly moves to defend his partially eaten crustacean from her, vaguely amused by the display. The mildly entertained look on her face doesn't go away when he responds to her either. A more self-conscious girl might have taken the jab personally, but Jenny just lets him have that, watching him like she's enjoying an inside joke as she sits there on his table, casual as you please in her dirty prison uniform and Karkat's clashing sweater-- as if it's the most normal, natural thing.

Another exhale of gray smoke escapes her as she leans over to flick his glasses back up on his nose, finally answering in that dry voice of hers, "So you are sulking. What, not happy you survived the fucking apocalypse or something, Ampora?"

"Piss off," is his rebuttal, recoiling away from the flick with a halfhearted snarl and a swat of his hand. He could take out his latent aggression here, it's a perfect excuse (and the perfect victim), and it isn't like he hasn't had plenty of bad blood with Jenny to draw from - but, even if he won't necessarily admit it, he's tired. Physically, emotionally. It tempers his temper some.

"Does a cholerbear shit on the dismembers corpses of its wictims? 'Course I'm glad I made it through, though it ain't exactly surprisin'." He draws his other hand from his plate, nudging his glasses back into place. They're still crooked. "Maybe I just ain't thrilled about gettin' dumped in some patriotic backwater corner a paradox space without warnin'. Figured you coulda puzzled that one out yourself, Quantum."

She pauses to put her cigarette out on the table a few inches from his fine lobster dish, eying him with an arch of her eyebrow that's somewhere between skeptical and amused. Eridan Ampora is nothing if not entertaining.

"How the fuck am I supposed to know? You always have your mermaid panties in a twist over something," she responds a bit pointedly, idly kicking her legs a little bit as she continues to rudely sit atop the table. "Maybe you should shut up, enjoy being alive, and eat your fucking shellfish, Ampora."

Why the flags was a thought Abel Gideon also had as he wandered Cape Canaveral's downtown a little aimlessly, his hands in his pants pockets and his eyes sullen but observant. Well, why not the flags?

There. A little harmless patriotism was really the least of his worries, Gideon imagined. The tattoo on his wrist bothered him, not only for what it said but because he couldn't fathom how they'd gotten it on him without his noticing. There was something unnerving about being in the dark about himself even now.

Eventually as he walks the toe of his shoe hits against a lobster claw discarded on the ground that appears to have been there for at least ten minutes or so, judging how even the birds have finished picking it clean. He crushes it underfoot and looks in the direction it presumably came from.

"I think that's littering."

"I think nobody's gonna say shit about it."

Eridan says it without looking back, assuming it's meant for him (god, why wouldn't it be); it's been a good ten minutes of equal parts sulking and dread, food only slightly more picked at than before, but he feels a little calmer. Not happy, but calmer. He even hazards a delayed glance back, arm slung over the back of his seat, eyebrows raised in a flat line.

"We just liwed through the fuckin' apocalypse, folk like me. Think that calls for some celebration. And I'm a sea dweller, we got different ideas a confetti." A little wave of his fingers. "You're lucky it ain't guts. Chum. Suchlike."

Trying to intimidate humans had never failed to lift his mood a little.

Standing there, hands in pockets, Gideon looks at Eridan with a calm, deadpan sort of observation, his head even quirked a little curiously. Eridan has a presence that implies imPort before he suggests it himself outloud; Gideon turns to regard him more fully.

He smiles thinly, shrugging his shoulders.

"Guts never really bothered me," he says, his tone has even as his expression. He walks over, still regarding Eridan inquisitively. "That was something, wasn't it? Not every day that you witness the end of the world... the end of a world. Almost remarkable."

It's hard to feel much of anything besides shock. Though, she thinks, that's not the right feeling, either. Shock is so active, so lively a feeling; not at all like the sedentary weight she carries in her stomach. Resignation, maybe? Grief?

Maybe not that, either. Disbelief, maybe? After all, everything was gone. All those people, all those promises... like stars so far distant as to disappear from sight. The hollow spaces haven't had time to grow cold, or fill in.

Even appearing so suddenly in Florida doesn't quite shake her heart loose. There are familiar faces, but...

Is there anyone she wants to talk to now?

She isn't looking, not really, but when she spots that familiar shade in the distance, everything shifts focus.

It seems like such a long walk, but once she crosses into that sphere of hopelessness, she can feel that weight behind her ribs grow heavy and sink, neatly dragging her heart to her feet.

She takes the seat across from him without greeting, and without tears.

To Eridan's benefit, he cuts the hopelessness jazz when he notices her.

On the other hand, he's so engrossed in wrathfully picking off the lobster's feelers that it takes him a few seconds to notice her, hand brought up to shade his eyes from any accidental eye contact with the plebs. It's just two or three moments and some angry sighs, but still. When he does finally look up, there's a brief moment of widening eyes and pause - then he's moving out of his seat, accidentally knocking the sad shellfish remains off the table as he half climbs it, crushing her to his chest in a gesture that's probably slightly too rough for comfort.

The possibility that maybe she wasn't here hadn't even occurred to him until just now, she's been such a constant in his life. But seeing her again brings the snap realization that he could just as well still be sitting here alone with a lobster, makes him really appreciate the magnitude and danger of what they've just gone through.

It makes him have feelins.

So that's why he's giving her an awkward one-armed hug over the table, probably attracting a stupid amount of attention. Wwhoops.

The heavy weight his presence exudes affects her more than she ever likes to admit; she's usually one to say she's given up on things like Hope, that it hurts too much to be disappointed, but that sinking weight behind her ribs keeps her from saying anything, or making herself known, until he notices her.

The weight falls when he moves, and she has barely a moment to come back to herself before he has her pulled half out of her chair, edge of the table digging into hip and her chest nearly crushed against his. She'd felt her brother's heart pull away from hers before he disappeared—before she disappeared, into this world, and he to some other plane; she'd heard of the fate of their friend, who had passed on in the old world. Losing everything so quickly, it would not have surprised her to find Eridan gone for good. It would not have shocked her, to be abandoned to the last.

He smells like blood, stale alcohol; like metal and salt, like a cold Atlantic beach.

With a shudder, she returns the one-armed hug with one of her own wrapping around his back, her other attempting to shove the table to the side to get it out of the way—whether it slides, or falls over, or only serves to push them away from it, she doesn't care. Her grip is tight, and her limbs shake, heart thudding in her ears.

"Eridan," she says, and it's gratitude and relief, terrified affection in every syllable. This is why, isn't it? Why she let herself fall for him in the first place? Because no matter what happened, he was there. Loss after loss, heart ripped to shreds in her chest, and he stayed. She's lost everyone she's loved, everyone she's cared for—every thing important to her was gone, left behind, taken away, destroyed—except him. He was constant.

Her anchor.

If they hadn't drawn attention already, the loud crash of the table toppling over, metal rim hitting rustic stonework and an unfortunate water glass shattering in the commotion certainly would.

Everybody wants to rule the world

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a million years later

LIKE A CALENDER YEAR AFTER THAT

IT'S DELAYS AND ICE AGES ALL THE WAY DOWN