capeandcowllogs | WE DON'T HAVE TO STAY FRIENDS

WHO: Karkat "Failknight Blabbermouth" Vantas and John "Not a Homosexual" Egbert.
WHERE: At the Renfaire, somewhere around the edge of the village.
WHEN: Saturday afternoon.
WARNINGS: THIS IS PRETTY HIDEOUS.
SUMMARY: The Mage of Doom supplied Karkat with some of his eldritch magics, in the form of a love potion. Or, uh. A hate potion. Yeah.
FORMAT: Para.

Karkat Vantas was not desperate. It was a thought that had occurred to him on a whim, something stupid and offhand that his instructor had mentioned, and a casual request of Captor that he hadn't expected to be fulfilled. Imagine his surprise when the mage had rolled his eyes and said of course he could make that, who did he take him for.

Which was complete excrement, of course. There was no way this was going to work.

But, since he'd sat through Sollux's bragging and actually had the elixir now, he might as well give it a shot.

"Egbert." He rasped, narrowing his eyes at the other kid as he wandered past. Leaning against the fencepost with his shoulders slouched, he tried not to think about the vial in his satchel.

Karkat Vantas was not desperate. He just really needed a worthy rival in his life.

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Hah! That was a good one! A worthy adversary Egbert might be, but trounce? There was absolutely no way any victory over him could be, well, decisive.

Karkat spun on his heels, jabbing an index finger into John's chest. "You can keep dreaming about that, because it'll never happen! I'll absolutely thrash you, d'you hear me--"

Wait a second.

Waaaaaaiiiiiiit a second.

Was this actually working?

John scoffed, unable to keep the look of disdain off his face that the very idea that Karkat would be able to defeat him. It wasn't even that John was all that confident about his own skills, but he didn't want to think this guy could take him down that easily, and he definitely didn't want to let him think he could beat John easily in a fight.

"I would destroy you," John assured him with a solemn nod.

Most of the time this would be the moment where John was unable to keep up his facade and burst out laughing. Who said things like that anyways? That sounded so over the top and ridiculous, but right now John was dead serious about it and the look of disgust didn't leave.

It was working. He couldn't believe this. It was working.

Holy shit.

This might just be working. This might just be working. He had his rival.

"Yeah, I bet you would." Karkat spat, straightening his spine nad filling his lungs until he was almost taller than John (almost). "I'll rip you apart." He spat, turning his head until he was glaring at Egbert out of the corner of his eyes. Maybe they were... Just bantering. Having banter. That was a thing that happened, yeah?

Realizing that some kind of ridiculous stand off was going down, John quickly shifted position so he could stand up straight himself. For a brief moment he debated standing on his toes to make himself taller, but for fear for Karkat noticing and calling him on it John opted to leave both heels firmly planted on the ground. For extra measure though, he put on his best "fierce" face, which probably would have been a lot fiercer if the muscles in John's face were used to the concept of scowling, and his teeth didn't stick out so much, sort of ruining the affect of those impressive flat line expressions Dave was so good at pulling off.

"Would not!" John corrected him quickly, just to make it clear he was not backing down from the challenge, even if he lacked any good retorts to something like that. He'd used up his best line already and was sort of left with hasty, and less than impressive sounding 'nu-uh!' type replies at this point. He made a note to himself to work on his comebacks for the (what he was sure would be numerous) future run-ins with this Karkat kid.

Okay, that facial expression was pretty entertaining. More silly than anything, really. And his comebacks lacked the sort of sting that Karkat would have preferred. But whatever, the imbecile was making an effort now. That was what counted.

The cogs in his head were still a little creaky, still recovering from the fact that Captor might actually have done something right. "Yuh huh." No, wait, he could do better than that. "If you're so sure about being just as good as me, why haven't you proven it yet?" Okay, better. At least somewhat threatening.

That was actually a good question. Damn Karkat and his trickery! Wait, John had an answer for that! Up until today he hadn't even known who Karkat was, so it wasn't like he could really prove he was better than Karkat if he didn't know the guy existed. Well, whether he liked the guy or not there was no reason to be dishonest about the reason.

"Because I didn't even know who you were!"

That didn't seem like enough of an answer though. More like an excuse for not proving himself, and John couldn't just leave it at that. That would be so lame on his part. "But I can prove it right now!"

Ha! There, a challenge. Lets see how Karkat dealt with that!!

All of the trickery. Karkat was just nothing but deception and tricksiness, he was.

And that... That was really a bigger insult than anything John could have actually tried for.

"Didn't know who I am?" Inhale. Exhale.

"I was only top of the class until you got here. Only tied with you for first place for the last few months. Why should you pay any attention to me?"

Not bitter, not bitter, he wasn't bitter. He wasn't going to be bitter all over the poor imbecile. Despite how much he deserved it. He was bigger than that.

He was, however, not bigger than snipes.

"Maybe you should have paid better attention, mmmm?"

That was stupid! If Karkat was as good as he was claiming to be then John would have easily noticed him. It wasn't like he was oblivious of most people... most of the time. He was pretty good about being aware of his surroundings, and he was almost certain that Karkat hadn't done anything to stand out in any way.

Okay, so if he wasn't lying and he was top of the class too, that was technically standing out, but apparently he wasn't doing it in a noticeable way.

"Maybe you're just really boring!" John blurted out. Again, not the smoothest in the way of comebacks, but he could probably expand on that.

"Maybe you're just so boring I don't want to notice you." Okay... no, that didn't even make sense. Maybe he should just trying punching Karkat and see where that got him? That would probably work out better for him than trying to do this verbal battle here.

WE DON'T HAVE TO STAY FRIENDS

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YES I BACKLOG MONTHS LATER IS THAT OKAY.,

THAT'S COOL! No worries, bro :)

/PLOWS THROUGH OLD TAGS >8T

\o/

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