roppel dangge (Ourbouros mix)

You are Dave Strider.

You are Dave Strider.

And so are the rest of them.

Holy fuck, what a headtrip, you think, sitting up and stroking your flawless hair back into place.

At lease you're not a mess like the rest of them.

There is literally a pile of dead Daves.  Heaped on top of one another like  presents under a fucking Christmas tree, merry Davemas, ho ho ho, and there's blood seeping from them, congealing and curdled and thick and nauseating.

And it's hot out here.

You kind of wonder if you ended up in hell after all.

You wander over to the edge of the plateau you're standing on and it's shaped like a gear, perfectly round, and you're pretty sure you didn't get out of it that easy, because nothing is allowed to be simple anymore.  You blame that mostly on Rose and yourself- mostly yourself, even though it was her batshit 'let's wreck as much shit as we can and see what happens' plan that convinced you that your ectosister had finally done an acrobatic fucking pirouette off the handle and into the horrorterrors.  It was still your fault.

You rub absently at a stain on your nice black tuxedo.  You woke up a little ways off from the pathetic looking pile of fake Daves.  Out of morbid curiosity, you wander a little closer, observing their slack, but still mysteriously unreadable, expressions.  You realise that they're each a little different.  Maybe one's hair is a shade more strawberry than blond, maybe one's nose had been broken.  You feel funny deep in your throat when you laughed at them.

     "You fucked up, you fucked up bad..." You repeat, pushing a pair of mutilated shades delicately onto the bridge of  one Dave's nose.  No Strider should be without his shades.  This one is thirteen year old Dave, back when you took ironic selfies as a hobby.  His cheeks are still round, his lashes are long and crusted shut with blood.  He's pretty.  He's still wearing that dumb shirt Bro got you for your twelfth birthday, with the pixelated record and red sleeves on it.

You've also figured out where all the dead Daves come from.  There's an Alpha timeline, where things go as they're meant to, more or less.  Basically, you're a version of Alpha Dave (AD, After Death, look, more irony, Bro, see it?)  That bastard is living what you could have had, stupid red pajamas and hanging out with space aliens and kickass cape and all.  

You're pretty sure you hate him.

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You go through your old chatlogs, you read them out loud in varying voices, (you've got John's pre-pubescent squeak down pat, but, oh God, what if he doesn't even sound like that anymore, you're forgetting, you're slipping, Dave, keep up with time) you pace, you walk around, you scream at the nakodiles, you're stuck here, you want to die, and you most certainly do not approach the corpse pile again.  It smells. You talk to it sometimes, and you're glad bodies don't rot here in your kingdom of magma and cogs.  In the logs, your friends call it LOHAC.  

You have got to get out of here.

You're slipping, Dave.

Keep up, li'l lion man.

You swear to God sometimes Bro talks to you.

Fifty six seconds.

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You are on the verge of jumping into the undulating sea of molten rock beneath you for the eighty ninth time when a screen opens on your iShades.  The text is all caps, trunctuated, choppy.  Screen name is uranianUmbra.  He's a total douchebag, self important and sexist.

You just about weep with happiness to see somebody contacting you.

He calls you his Knight.

You're not quite sure how to respond, so you ask him what he means.  He tells you that every Lord needs a Knight, to carry out his work, put down rebels, and so forth.

He sets your teeth on edge.  You almost tell him to fuck off, except you don't.   It's been so, so, so long since anybody's talked to you.  You just kind of go along with it. How bad could it really be?  You decide to play hard to get, since you really want him to keep talking to you.  Your sanity has been ground down dangerously close to the point of no return, and bad things happen to crazy people.  You're not crazy.

You're not.

You're not.

You ask for his name.

He tells you to call him Lord Caliborn.

You comply.

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It's been exactly two more months when he tells you how to get your fucking life back.

He kept talking about how some lady called the Batterwitch got into Jade' s head, rewired it.  She turned out to be a doggy space witch, fluffy white ears and all.  You bet she's cavity-inducingly adorable, just like always.

He tells you that Jade ported Alpha Timeline Dave back to LOHAC, into your old apartment building.

You think that the next time you see Jade, you're going to kiss her good and hard.

When you climb up the stairs to your apartment, you listen at the door for a while.  He's in there, walking around your room, looking at your selfies, talking to himself about things that you did.

Anger washes over you, heady and strong.  Lord Caliborn left you a message.

     "THE ONLY THING YOU HAVE TO DO.  IS KILL HIM.  AND MAKE SURE HIS DEATH IS HEROIC. OR JUST.  AND THEN.  HAVE EVERYTHING BACK.  YOUR EXTRAVAGANT BITCHES.  EVEN THE DOG ONE. AND YOUR 'BEST BRO'. ALL YOURS.  SWEAR ALLEGIANCE TO ME.  AND I WILL HELP YOU.  WE ARE ALIKE, DAVE.  WE BOTH WANT TO WIN.  OUR SESSIONS.  WE WILL HELP EACH OTHER."

Of course you do.  Couldn't hurt to have a little extra help from a fellow time player.  And maybe you were a little tipsy on getting your life back.  You were so close.

Caliborn advised you to decapitate him.  Said that it would be thoroughly fitting, as Striders seem to have trouble keeping their heads, whatever that meant.  It would be a just death, you were getting everything back.  It was good, you were going to help your friends more than he ever could. 

You lurk in the doorway to your room, though it doesn't feel like yours.  His back is to you, he's looking at  your old turntables.  You remember how the vinyl felt under your fingers when you spun out your sick beats, recording rap battles for John and that purple text druggie.  You flashstep up behind him and yank his head one way and your sword the other, and he doesn't even have time to scream.  Bro would be so proud of you.  You feel the legendary shit sword bump his vertebrae and you drop him.  He kind of spasms, fingers twitching, blood bubbling in the corners of his mouth.  You step on his exposed windpipe and press, press, press and you're suddenly aware that you're crying and laughing as he convulses and fights for air and then suddenly he goes very still.

You're so glad that your God Tier pajamas are red.

"WELL DONE.  MY KNIGHT.  WELCOME BACK. TO YOUR LIFE."

"yes my lord"

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