Karkat's Journey

Preparing

Equius had the necklaces made, each one perfectly identical. Dave wore the original, the one that Karkat constantly wore. Dave hadn't said one word since his little speech in Gamzee's defense, which was about a week ago. Gamzee had attempted to spark up a conversation with him both on trollian and in person, but Dave didn't respond. John, Jade, and Rose all attempted to converse with their friend but, Like Gamzee, they were shot down with silence. Dave spent his time typing away on his outdated iPhone or his iShades. No one really knew what he did but they had all assumed that this was his way of still coping about the loss of his matesprit.

Even though they were all still worried about their human friend, the others had work to do. Gamzee had the massive group of their followers, willing to fight, get a few pointers from their most gifted fighters; Dirk, Jake, Terezi, Nepeta, Kanaya, Equius, and Jade. For those with any kind of telekinesis, Gamzee sent them off with Aradia, Vriska, Sollux, and Tavros. Everyone who wasn't helping train the trolls and humans were doing other activities to help out. Yes, everyone, even Dave, had some sort of helping hand in this.

They didn't expect this battle to last sweeps and sweeps, at most possibly a week. They had planned the battle to be more of a distraction for their real objective. And hopefully, if all went as planned, they would win with minimal injuries and, if they were lucky, next to no deaths. They weren't really planning on killing the empress, maybe just throwing her in jail or something. Gamzee hadn't thought this through so when questioned he would simply shrug and say 'where ever the messiah's guide us is what's meant to be.'

The word about the battle ensuing against the Empress had played in their favour and had reached here rather slow. She wasn't exactly anchored to here somewhat large palace her, she had taken the liberty to explore this new galaxy and see what new plants needed to be conquered. Once word had reached her though, she almost immediately sent back her demand to prepare her troops and, sadly, turned her ship away from its course to a land with an abundance of gold. She was scared, she had to admit. The last time there was a war against her, she nearly lost. Hundreds of thousands of trolls had died and she barely managed to win. Now, there was many more trolls opposed to her and a few of them had the telekinetic abilities she had recently lost. She was terrified of losing. Terrified of not having some sort of power, it was her blood right after all.

A solid two weeks of planning and preparing and Gamzee received the word that the Condesce's army had just arrived from their last trip to an unknown plane that had most likely been taken under control by the Batterwitch herself. Looks like their previously scheduled mini battle would be moved up a month. It was going to be tough, her army had trained for so long and his only a couple weeks, but hopefully their plan would work fast enough and this whole silly little war thing would stop. Being the intelligent leader he was, Gamzee sent off little groups on the villages nearest to the The Empress' palace and battleship, he didn't any more fatalities.

Everyone was on edge as the time came closer to "fight" her army, trolls and humans were all grasping weapons and covered in quick, makeshift armour while others stood back to heal the injured. They weren't supposed to actually kill their enemy, just wound them enough so they would stop attacking. But if they had to, killing was most definitely an option.

Gamzee had one more leaderly decision to make, who would say to fight and who would go off to finish off the Condescension. He would stay, of course. Now it was just the matter of who else would stay and who would go off to stop the reign of the Empress. All those with telekinesis had to stay and fight, so that rid the choices of Vriska, Aradia, and Tavros, for team "Stop the Condesce." Sollux was immediately drafted off to take down the empress, his psionic abilities would be of great use to them. Roxy, Jade, and John were most definitely going. Terezi, after some debate, was on that same team. Finally, Dave was drafted as well. The Knight of Time was confused as to why he of all people was drafted to that team. He expected to be left here to tend to the wounded.