Karkat Vantas stood in the middle of the desert, shielding his eyes from the sun above. It did not shine quite as brightly as the one back on Alternia; it was closer to the average lighting levels in Sgrub, to his senses. It was still pretty damn bright, but at least he wouldn't burn to a crisp just by being outside.
Outside. Hopefully, Equius would finish constructing the initial shelters soon so they could rest in the shade and make some plans for their continued survival in this strange, kinda hot place on a planet that was, on the whole, not quite unfamiliar.
"Karcrab?"
Karkat turned around as a small hand touched his shoulder. It felt was Feferi's, he could tell from the colorful bracelets.
"What?"
"I just want you to know, you're a pretty good leader when you want to be."
"Of course I am", Karkat scoffed.
It was true. When push came to shove, he had done damn well in keeping his fellow trolls from killing each other all over again. It had been a hectic time and it hurt Karkat's brain to recall...
They had all woken up in the main computer room of the laboratory in the Veil. Karkat had been the first to wake up. He had counted ten other trolls there, all alive, breathing, and asleep. For a moment, he had wondered where Aradia had gone. Then he noticed Tavros had his original legs again, and Vriska was missing an arm and eye. It didn't take Karkat long to realise they had all reverted, as it were, to their physical states right before the game had begun. Aradia was missing because she was dead again, Karkat realized. He had no time to dwell on that -- he remembered all the events and had to make sure things wouldn't go wrong the moment the others woke up, for they would surely remember as well...
"Sollux", Karkat called out as he came back out of his flashback, "how's your head?"
"Pretty good, KK. I'd kind of exthpected the voithes to come back but tho far it'th been remarkably thilent. Relatively thpeaking."
"Great. Does your telekinesis thing still work?"
Sollux hovered a good five feet above the ground in reply, appleberry sparks surrounding him.
"Are there any Earth human settlements you can see from up there?"
"I dunno, KK. Let me thee."
Sollux climbed another fifteen feet, held a hand above his eyes and slowly panned around.
"Well... there'th thome kind of community a fair way two the west... and thomething large and bright further two the south", the psychic revealed as he went. "The retht ith jutht more dethert."
"Wonderful. Maybe if we go there we can find out where the hell this is", Karkat said approvingly. "Equius, you keep doing what you're doing. Sollux, try and get a connection to the Human kids. Terezi and I are going to take a hike."
"What do I doooooooo, fearless leader?" Vriska teasingly asked from a half-constructed shelter.
"Stay outta trouble."
Kanaya stepped forward. "Karkat, with all due respect to both your choices made as our leader, and Terezi, I believe it would be better if I were to visit the Human settlement with you instead."
Terezi turned to Kanaya, looking the tiniest bit insulted.
"I suppose regular yellow eyes would frighten most uninformed Humans well enough", Kanaya explained. "Yours, on the other hand, are completely red. Also, you have a tendency to... cackle."
"And you have a tendency to use overly expensive words, but okay", Terezi conceded. "I'll just stay here and keep an eye on these guys."