hashtagafreakingghost

You...you're talking like you all only had one person looking after you... What about- oh, God, this is a horrible question, I'm sorry- what about your parents...?

[Dave breathes out and then sucks on his teeth for a second.]

Ummmmmmmmmm. Right, okay. This is where shit starts to get kind of weird, so...fair warning.

Bro was technically my gene daddy. And Rose's. And then her mom turned out also to have donated her DNA to our shared pool. And then John's dad isn't actually his dad at all, and Jade's grandpa was both of their dad, and John's nanna was. Well. You can probably figure it out.

...

This is where time travel starts figuring in.

[The shock and all that starts to fade into what right about now.]

And that's how...Rose is...your sis...ter......

...

Okay. O- Okay, uh. How- DNA, do you mean, you're... Is this some kind of mad scientist stuff?

Yeah, pretty much. Yup.

[...]

I'm not taking a dramatic pause or anything, I'm just working out the best way to explain this bullshit without sounding completely off the walls bonkers. But I'm starting to think that might be impossible. Okay, so after I got into the Medium but before Jade did, John managed to go from...Rose's planet, I think? To a laboratory in an asteroid belt circling all our planets. And there were some machines in there, and he mashed his hams into their buttons like a brainless moron in an ugly green lab coat, and what he ended up doing was making baby time paradox clones of our guardians and then mixing the two sets of DNA to make baby us.

...Maybe I should've drawn that, but it doesn't look any less insane on paper, believe me.

He... While he was already... clones of- but if they were- then what came first, or- oh my God, Dave, you're the freaking chicken or the egg dilemma!

Hey, I'm not. Us nonsensical recombinant offspring totally came second, it's our guardians who are fucked up and weird, I mean John literally birthed them out of themselves. That's what paradox clones are, apparently: clones that the universe pulls backwards in time to actually become the thing what they were cloned from.

But how did he mix the DNA for himself if he was already alive?! Who did it in the first place?!

[Her voice is actually hilariously- not shrill, but high and confused? It's great.]

Did- did John have a small, baby John crawling around him?! Isn't that supposed to make the universe explode or- or- or--!!

[Dave can't help it. He actually snickers a little.]

Why would the universe explode over a relatively simple time loop like that? Of course there was a baby John, how else would he get born. The baby usses went back in time, too, just not as far back as our parents so they'd be grown-ups when they got us.

[...Well.]

Or of a practically acceptable child-rearing age, anyway.

........

[Click. Here is Ashley, out in the wilderness, face lit by...what seems to be a campfire off-screen. Probably the Talonflame she's snuggled up to and leaning against is responsible for that, or Agatha, who's curled up on one side, with a hovering Togetic nearby. She has, in fact, her whole roster out, from the Espurr to the Stantler to the Shinx to an incredibly sleepy Munna balancing on her head.

...Boy that sure is a face. It's essentially just

]

I turned this on. Solely so. You could see. My face.

[Dave's PokéGear is set to match conversation format unless he chooses otherwise, so this time she can see him when he laughs again, voicelessly, through his nose.]

Okay, okay. It's really not that difficult a concept, though. Time travel only causes a paradox along the alpha timeline if it instigates a contradiction, right? Like if someone went back from the future to, I dunno, stop their parents from porking and conceiving them. It wouldn't work because from that future's point of view, the parents have obviously already boinked. But if our Marty McFly went back and either didn't affect things or put into motion events that were supposed to happen, then it's fine even if he goes back to a time where he already exists. You see? So John and Baby John can chill together because, from John the elder's point of view, they already did when he was Baby John.

Edited 2016-02-26 04:03 (UTC)

[She's positively pouting, which combined with her tear-stained face (still red from the cold) makes her look a good deal younger.]

I guess that makes sense...but then when did it start? It's just a loop, forever and ever? That's so confusing. Time travel sucks.

[He snorts before he can stop himself.]

Yeah, tell me about it. Try living, like, literal weeks of the same twenty-four hour period and then see how you feel about it.

~~[There's a "your story is one of many possibilities" comment to be made here, but that's getting a tad too meta]~~

Oh my... Did you do that? What the heck.

Yeah, uh. That was my thing, I guess. You know, video games. Ridiculous powers. That kind of deal.

I was the Marty McFly of our team, basically. The Knight of Time.

[She chews on her bottom lip for a moment.]

That's a lot of pressure for one kid.

[Blink.]

...I mean.

[He rubs a hand down the short hairs at the back of his neck, then shakes his head a little.]

Not any more than anybody else. John was our leader and had to stumble blind through a lot of crap while we were still getting our shit together like particularly incompetent butt monkeys, and Rose was the one most active in figuring out what was going on, fighting for a way to survive an unwinnable session. And Jade was responsible for creating a whole goddamn universe for us to go to if we did. So really, the only difference for me was that I just literally had more time to dick around and get things done, and I didn't even really have that much weight on my shoulders, comparatively. And I had Terezi walking me through pretty much everything.

--Oh, shit, the trolls. I didn't explain them yet, I'm getting ahead of myself.

It sounds like all of you...

[It's pretty impossible for Ashley to hide the concern on her face, but she swallows down a question and gently nods. And shivers. And pulls a blanket up around her.]

Okay. Okay, um, go on. We...kind of threw out chronology.

Right. I mean, the chronology's kind of fucked to start with, for obvious reasons. We were sort of getting close anyway? To the part where the trolls come in, that is.

[He thinks back on it, and yeah, nothing really important happened between getting into the medium and Karkat's trolling campaign really starting in earnest. Probably. Who knows, time is a construct.]

Okay. So, I guess Karkat told you, but the trolls come from a totally different world. The thing is, they've got their version of SBURB, too. I think it's called SGRUB? Everything was a grub on Alternia, I don't even fucking know. So anyway, Karkat's leading their session, and as I understand it they actually do pretty well all the way up until the very end, when they're about to claim the prize for beating the game.

[~~'But that all changed when the Fire Nation attacked.'~~]

But, uh. We kind of fucked it up for them, apparently.

Edited 2016-02-26 22:05 (UTC)

You...huh? Like...your game ran into theirs or something?

Sort of. ...gnh, okay. So you know how I said Jade was in charge of making a new universe in our session? That's what the ultimate prize of the game is; everyone's planet gets kind of flattened at the start, but at the end, you pretty much become the gods of a new world that you yourselves created.

The universe that the trolls created...was ours. The universe with the Earth me, Jade, and the rest of us are from. So there was some kind of causative connection, right? And when we kind of shat the end boss up for ourselves, he...went back somehow and fucked them over, too. Soooo they were understandably pretty pissed at us when they discovered our existence.

[Her mouth hangs open from about..."gods of a new world" 'til the end. Somewhat faintly:] They should put a...freakin' disclaimer on this game...

H- they made it...but they still, uh...lost? Is this another time travel paradox thing?

I...mmh, no, I don't think so. The universe got made fine, but Jack Noir--that's the boss guy I mentioned--attacked them before they could go through to it. They managed to escape, but it meant they were kind of stuck. And dude was still after them. So they started hassling us over the internet, except their timeline and ours weren't totally synced so it was just confusing and aggravating for everyone involved. Jade got the worst of it, though.

Over the internet when you were in the mediu-

[wait]

Are you...telling me they...were actually trolling you?

[He just tilts his shades down a little so she can see his eyebrows rise.]

Mmm.

[Really, Ashley. Duh.]

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