It starts with Dave. "Faygo? Oh man, bro, I am all over this shit," he says, twisting off the cap and taking a swing right from the bottle. "Awesome." He doesn't think he needs to explain that he means this in the most ironic fashion imaginable.
He forgets that while John is the undisputed pranking MASTER, his skills only work when faced with deliberate gambits, not friends who sometimes forget not everyone is a tier-nine irony master, and that Jade was raised by a devilbeast dog on an island and doesn't even understand something's ironic when Dave explains that's what he's doing. Their faces light up with expectation and they pour some themselves and gulp. Jade giggles at the taste of the bubbles, while John, proving once and for all his lack of taste, declares it not bad.
And Rose will passive-aggressively go along with most anything. She and Kanaya are already several layers deep into a host-off. So she takes the offered drink, compliments the flavor, and makes sure to drink all of it to show her sincere appreciation and request more.
No one beats Rose Lalonde at shows of politeness. No one.
An hour later John is lying on something weird and uncomfortably bumpy. He's kind of confused by that because he's pretty sure floors are supposed to be flat, but it's hard to think clearly because Karkat is yelling something at some stupid asshole and how he's not supposed to go to sleep and what does he think he's doing lying there, and every time he decides he should look around to try to figure out why the floor isn't like floor he hears a loud HONK and changes his mind because he doesn't want to meet the clown, and anyway the ceiling is so interesting, it's shiny and metal and he can see shadowy movement in it. It's like, it's like if he was looking down on everybody, and also if there was a piece of metal in the way, but clear metal so he could see through it, but not actually too clear because not well, and is there a word for that, and somebody's saying something about how man that'd be a fucking miracle seeing through metal and Karkat is screaming SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP IF I HEAR THAT WORD ONE MORE TIME GAMZEE.
Jade hasn't stopped giggling. She's spinning around in place. Now and then she falls down and rolls around on the floor for a while before managing to figure out where her legs are. She's recounting in great if extremely disjointed detail the plot of every Squiddles episode to a rapt audience of Feferi, Nepeta and, for reasons no one really wants to speculate on, Eridan.
No one has seen Rose for some time, ever since Kanaya led her off to show her something. Kanaya had been more descriptive than that at the time but the rest of the trolls had stopped listening in self-defense as soon as they heard the phrase "new clothes". Was there anything more boring than fashion? They thought not.
And Dave, ever the coolkid, is chilling out in one corner of the lab, nodding magnanimously at the various scrawls Terezi is producing. He's doing this from his seat on top of Equius, something which everyone else is trying, very hard, to just ignore, and somehow Dave lost his shirt along the way. He's also holding a slow and nonsensical drawled conversation with Tavros between Terezi's pictures that seems alternately friendly and threatening, which convinces Terezi that Dave really gets what friendship is about much better than that John dork. She's trading barbs on the matter with Vriska, who in turn is trying to trade barbs with Dave and being met with a fuzzy coolkid brushoff.
GA: Um
GA: Excuse Me
GA: May I Inquire How Things Are Going With The Rest Of Our New Guests
GA: Are They Behaving In A Manner Characteristic With Our Past Interactions
TA: why ii2 the 2narky broad overcome wiith giiggle2 a2 well?
GA: That
GA: Well
GA: One Might Say
TA: they're all actiing liike dope2 over here now
TA: john'2 the only quiiet one and he'2 pa22ed out on the horn piile wiith gamzee
GA: Oh
GA: Perhaps We Should Have Been More Cautious About Sharing Food
GA: Despite Their Many Similarities They Are Aliens
Ga: A Fact It Is Easy To Forget
TA: yeah
TA: iif ro2e ii2 botheriing you ju2t briing her back down
TA: 2he can roll around iin the horn piile or whatever
TA: no one care2 what happen2 to that 2hiity crap
GA: Um No
GA: We Are
GA: It Is Fine
GA: Thank You
