Inspired by Left-Handed by asterCrash, on AO3
Your advance warning is when an Eridan hits on you.
There's an infinity of doomed timelines cluttering up the dreambubbles, but things are always broadly the same. While Eridan will proposition anything that looks like it ever breathed, most of the time he'll give up just as easily. He has his primary goal (Feferi, red) and his secondary goal (Vriska, black), and preferentially targets whoever else is in a quadrant with them in the hopes he can disrupt the existing relationship enough to open it up for himself. He does try to pull in random people for auspisticing but you've never known one to pull that on a non-troll. The fact you have not yet seen an instance who was successful at any of this doesn't seem to have dissuaded all of them from continuing with the same basic pattern.
The fact this Eridan weathers three snarky and elaborate nopes before giving up is unusual, and, while you're not masochistic enough to interact with him long enough to ask directly, you do wonder what caused this deviation from the norm. Is there some other Rose that's hooked up with Feferi that he confused you with? Feferi's certainly an intriguing person, but... The few other Roses you've encountered so far have been with a Kanaya, and as unlikely as it is in the face of infinity, you'd wanted that to be another constant.
You're so wrapped up in those thoughts you very nearly walk into Vriska. It's only the fact that Vriska can't not be the center of attention for another second that spares you an awkward collision.
"Heeeeeeeey there," Vriska grins. It should not be possible to grin words. They may all be ghosts from alternate timelines in a videogame living in bubbles blown by horrorterrors at the request of an alien fish princess, but there are limits to what you are prepared to accept in this reality, and Vriska coyote-smiling dialogue at you is one of them. "Check out this bubble memory I found!"
She is, indeed, holding one of those bubblr spheres. When you don't take it immediately she attempts to shove it into, or perhaps through, your face. "Come on!"
"I'm dubious our senses of humor overlap enough to take this recommendation without you providing some salt as well."
"It's not thaaaaaaaat kind of recommendation, dummy!"
You suspect you'll regret this, but you take it and .
"What," you say. You think it may be a question, if not of Vriska than of the universe. Universes.
"Yeah, I am pretty awesome there, like I always am." Vriska does an elaborate flip of her hair. It's the same elaborate flip of her hair she always does. You suspect graphic analysis would reveal it is, in fact, exactly the same down to the individual hair. Dave could make a samehairflip gifset of the multitude of dead Vriskas all pretending nonchalance in the most showy, attention-seeking way possible to slam reality for being such lazy animators. "It's from another timeline I stumbled across of us where the game never happens and we both live on Earth. Annnnnnnyway just felt like updating you on how awesome another you was by hitching yourself to my own far greater awesomeness. Wouldn't have thought you had it in you!"
It is rare that words fail you. As ever, you are not speechless, but what comes out is far from your ideal eloquence. "That is completely impossible nonsense."
"Jegus Lalonde, you'd think you'd understand how paradox space works when you're living in it! I guess that's just another thing I'm better at than you. There are infinity timelines, right?" She waits a beat like she's expecting you to reply, then barrels along: "Of course I'm right! So everything happens somewhere. It's just I'm lucky enough to be able to zero right in on the cool timelines like that one whenever I want while the rest of you chumps flop around at whatever talking boring lamer talk about 'probability' instead."
"You're not even a troll in this," you say. You are absolutely certain that timeline branches based on possible decisions do not result in species changes. There is no sequence of events where Vriska accidentally becomes an ordinary human being, no matter how stupid her decisionmaking may be.
Hair flip. It is exactly the same each time, you're sure, because to be even a nanometer off would mean the gesture was less than the most ostentatious possible hair flip. "Turns out I'm just so incredible it's still true even as a human."
"That's not how paradox space works!"
"Oh reaaaaaaaally then what did I just finish rebubbling to all my eight hundred million followers?"
The clever retort is that they're all Eridan, and there for stalking purposes rather than having any interest in Vriska's actual bubblr content (no one could actually be reading it, she posts every single stupid thing she does like she's liveblogging her undead life through a megaphone except when she rebubbles spider images tagged as everything but spiders). And that's what comes out of your mouth, because you can critique people's poor use of statistics on dreambubble social media as a measure of worth on autopilot. Even as the words flow forth, all you can actually think about is the sheer audacity that Vriska didn't even try to make this look authentic. And you can see perfectly well that addition at the bottom about how it would blow your mind, just assuming you'd fall for this sham before she'd even shown it to you. It's so infuriating the fact she's also ensured that eight hundred million Eridans, give or take an infinity, will end up whining nasally at you about what a great nemesis they'd make doesn't even feel worth mentioning.
You vent to Kanaya later about what does matter. "I mean just look at it!"
"Mm-hm," Kanaya agrees, not taking her eyes off the bubble.
"It'd have been easy to make something up that sounded plausible. Or at least possible." Your mind is a whirl of all the ways this could've resembled a real memory - what Vriska went with is so ridiculously absurd that anything would sound more real. All that was really needed was to say it was a timeline where the trolls did manage to open the door. Or not be set on Earth, why is it even on Earth? Why put in all this extra detail, all those bits implying a history, a long relationship, the passage of time, as if trying to be convincing when every one of those details confirmed this was fake?
"Sure."
"The whole thing would still be a transparent, inept attempt at manipulation, but at least it'd have shown some effort."
"Right."
"But she just insisted that's how paradox space works when we all know full well it isn't, and she knows I know, and I know she knows I know."
"Sure."
"It's like she went out of her way to present the most obviously faked memory possible!"
"Uh-huh."
"Sometimes I just want sear her whole stupid pile of bubbles apart and-"
"Fuck her in the ashes?" Kanaya finishes.
