Beep Beep we're going to Sparby's

[airlockedmods]

Once everyone's in the dick limo and they've watched the Fantasy Sweet burn down behind them (dodging the flaming debris once the pressure builds up enough inside to make the whole thing go nuclear), it's off to the nearest fast food planet.

Which...is about five lightdays away.

Luckily for you, you have your very own Personal Artistic License to keep you entertained. So PAL bounces around the back of the limo, sitting in every lap that will have him, as he tells the story of Kip from the day he hatched as a tiny, impressionable smeet to present.

Sparing absolutely no detail.

Especially about the part where Kip failed his navigator's exam because he stopped at Then-Foodcourtia and crashed the ship into one of the greasy pustules that had sprouted on the planet's surface, destroying the aircraft and boiling his instructor alive in the fiery grease of hell.

So now there's a dick limo parked in the Sparby's parking lot. For anyone who had Arby's or Arby's-adjacent restaurants on their home planet... The menu's not much different. Everything meat-based is 100% beef, the milkshakes look delicious, and of course there are turnovers (apple, cherry, and chocolate).

Which... well, catch Kip and PAL in the corner shoving milkshakes and turnovers in their faces tbh.]

Welcome to Sparby's, Survivors.
You earned it.

Comments

[cyan_maid]

Yes. She's actually a very old genocidal fish alien dictator. It took a long time and a lot of prodding from my friends to even consider that possible, especially since...she's also my great-grandmother? And that would've been my company, eventually. But life just doesn't work out the way we think it will.

[misanthropicprinciple]

...

[What the fuck is Homestuck.]

Yeah, it never does, does it.

[cyan_maid]

[It's a mystery.]

Nope. Not in the least. [A pause.] I don't even know what the heck became of my life before this, either. If it helps. I just know for sure that I'm definitely supposed to be dead.

[misanthropicprinciple]

[Sharply:]

What? Why?

[Church is one thing. Ardyn is one thing. But he's just met this kid and she's seventeen, she shouldn't be dead.]

[cyan_maid]

[OH BOY]

Well, I got stabbed once, but I was able to revive myself...then I got impaled, but my friend revived me through one of his usual hyper-complicated plans - the linchpin being our mutual love interest kissing his dismembered head in front of an exploding volcano while a dragon flew around it. Then I got blown up to ascend to God Tier, and then...well you can't die as a God Tier unless you do so while doing something Heroic, or you've done too many terrible things that death is a Just end. I got mind-controlled by my great-grandmother and made to do really awful things...and then was put to sleep? Somehow? And got run through with a sword, and that...was my Just death.

[Sorry Junpei Homestuck doesn't make sense]

[misanthropicprinciple]

[That's... fuckdamn, that's a lot, and for all Zero Escape's done to him, Junpei has trouble following most of what Jane says. That doesn't stop it from being horrifying. He's horrified.]

And they--they put you through the show? After that?!

[cyan_maid]

Well, they didn't orchestrate my life...and after all this, can you honestly say they'd care about letting someone die in peace after royally fucking up?

[She frowns, a bit of roughness and prickle to her posture, but it's more internal, not "okay Jumpy stop asking me shit now".]

Chitanda...she was the first...victim, in our group. And she was the sweetest, most normal girl you could ever meet. She just wanted to go back to her Classics Club and be with the boy she liked, and the network didn't care. [A pause, as she glances up at her own ragtag group. Her family.] The others...none of them have had it easy, either, but their stories aren't mine to tell. The people in charge of this don't care if you're good or evil, dead or alive, tortured or innocent. "Airlocked!" makes them money, gets them viewers - of course they don't care about who we were before.

[In a cold, bitter sort of way, the Heiress to a Baked Goods Empire can understand it perfectly. This is the formula that gets them the best results. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.]

[misanthropicprinciple]

...Fire would be too fast for these bastards.

[At least Akane did it to save lives, to bring justice for those children in the 2018 game. At least Delta did it for his goddamn shitty "complex motives."

Money and entertainment? Junpei's hand clenches.]

There isn't a single future out there where I don't kill the damned assholes that did this.

[cyan_maid]

[Of course that's what it's for. What else would it be? An Heiress should know a marketing strategy when she sees one, and hoo boy, has she seen a lot.]

You certainly won't be doing it alone.