Vriska has just had to put her lusus down. Her luck has been terrible and her plan to gain Aradia’s favour with a gift has completely gone. With all this she’s also been kicked off the blue team. She’s now going to have to join the red team with a lot of people who she dislikes.

Karkat messages Vriska to recruit her. Though she doesn’t have much choice in the matter. Karkat is a little less sympathetic to her situation. He suggests she just “dump” her dead lusus into the sprite, clean the blood off and get into the game. She retorts with an accusation about him hiding his blood color. All the other trolls have their blood color as their font color, his font is grey. He mentions that it’s no one’s business and he doesn’t need to wear his color “on his sleeve”. That is a bit on the nose.

Karkat tells Vriska she needs to get Travos into the game. She protests this, because she hates Travos. There was never any reason given for why Vriska hates Travos and Karkat questions this. He suspects they have a “dark romance” or “Kismesis”. This is denied, Karkat gives a lecture about how trolls only experience pity or hate for each other that determines their relationships. He says Vriska only has a mild hate towards everyone so she cant real relationships like a “Moirail” or “Matesprite”. We are not told what these words mean yet but it will be explained later. Karkat gets called out for watching too many romance movies and is told to get to his damn point.

Karkat needs Virska to get Travos in then herself. He needs her mind powers to help him with some kind of double agent. A game character named Jack. Jack as we know from previous acts is not as terrible in this world. Here he is performing the same role as the Wayward vagabond was for John. Though in most other ways he is the same, and eventually becomes Spades Slick.

It’s shown to us now that Karkat had been having this whole conversation with Jack awkwardly standing behind him. Also Karkat is nursing a stab wound. We learn Karkat blood seems to be all the colors?. This is to hide his blood color to the reader.

It seems Jack wants to work with Karkat to overthrow the black queen. Apparently their meeting was violent, as Jack’s stabbing is like a “hello”. But Karakt is cool with him despite having been stabbed. He’s been given intel about the queen’s weakness. Vriska is wondering what his blood color is but with Terezi being his host no one can actually see him. She mentions there should be a way to see past and future events in the game, and Karakt mentions Sollux may be working on that.

We are given a flashback of Jack and Karkats meeting. Jack only stabbed Karakt because he was talking too damn much. Apparently the sight of his own blood freaked Karakt out, he was trying to hide it and mostly concerned about hiding it from Jack. We’re now shown the real blood color on Jack’s knife. Karkat’s blood is red. Jack has no idea why this would concern anyone.

Karkat explains he is the only one with this candy red blood. It makes him a complete outcast in the hemospectrum based hierarchy. We can assume this is the lowest level on the spectrum. Jack doesn’t care about any of that and just wants him to shut up. So Jack slices his hand and reveals his blood is also red. Karkat shuts up and shakes Jack’s hand. They are allies now.