83 lines
4.8 KiB
HTML
83 lines
4.8 KiB
HTML
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<title>The Homestuck Epilogues: Meat - Chapter 9</title>
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<body>
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<div id='s9'></div>
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<div>
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<h1>Chapter 9</h1>
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<div class="o-story_text o_epilogue type-rg type-sm line-caption line-copy pad-x-0 pad-x-lg pad-b-lg">
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<p class="no-indent"><span class="opener type-hs-opener-rg type-hs-opener-sm">I</span>f you were
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one of the haters and fools who saw Lord English’s masterpiece
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circulating through the black veins of the dark web, and were
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rendered agog by its majesty, then you probably have a pretty good
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sense of what happened next. You probably also wouldn’t be rendered
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that much additionally agog if you were told it didn’t happen
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precisely as conveyed by the young Lord’s expertly produced
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claymation theater.</p>
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<p>Would it be that surprising if the first four heroes weren’t
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immediately captured in the juju, as the dark web swan song
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broadcast through bogus Vine videos originally depicted? Probably
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not. Would it raise any eyebrows if the action turned out to be a
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bit sloppier than that? A bloody nose here. A stray wedgie there.
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Someone trips on a cape. Loud eruptions of the word “Ow.” Petulant
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insults, smack talk, crude gestures, and stray honks from the
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sidelines. Would it rock anyone’s world to discover the stop-motion
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feature did not treat this battle royale with the utmost
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fidelity?</p>
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<p>No one who witnessed the spectacle online would react to these
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discrepancies with much surprise. But you are not such a witness.
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You are still John Egbert, and you had no idea what sort of raucous
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teen pandemonium to expect when you zapped into the lair of your
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nemesis to throw down. Which is why you were completely blindsided
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when, upon feeling overwhelmed by the melee, Caliborn sprung his
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gambit on you and your three best friends to even the odds.</p>
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<p>He opened his little red chest, and out came his white,
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house-shaped juju, levitating there, threatening to behave as the
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weapon many treasure hunters throughout history have described it
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to be. Upon a second look, it’s not quite white though. It’s
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colorless, null. A house-shaped hole in your confining reality. A
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hole that insists on being filled.</p>
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<p>You tried to resist its overwhelming pull, but to no avail. The
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force is too strong. Not like the sucking from the vacuum of space,
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or the tug from a gravitational singularity. It was more
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overpowering than any force in nature. Almost... metatextual. Not
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negating your powers, your strength to resist, so much as it seemed
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to overwrite them.</p>
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<p>The juju sucked you, Rose, Dave, and Jade into its void at the
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speed of eternity squashed down to a half second. You landed in the
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abstract prison it contains face-first, alone, and with a force
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that made you flip over a few times and skid along by the flat of
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your chin. You groped for your glasses instinctively, finding them
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in two cracked halves. You cradled their remains as you looked
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up.</p>
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<p>The blurry, distorted face of your laughing nemesis was the last
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thing you saw before the chest door slammed shut and plunged you
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into textual obsolescence.</p>
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<p>And here, you are now stuck. You will not emerge from this
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holding cell, from an outside perspective, for quadrillions of
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years. It is not long at all until you begin to wish you had
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brought something to read.</p>
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</div>
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</div>
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</body>
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