Category:Team Paradox

Summary
Team Paradox, a somewhat crazy conglomerate of trolls hell hivebent on being overly destructive and having a good time.

Order
BD <-- CR <-- CG and AB <-- BB <-- MK

The Story So Far
It all began when Marnix and Najash got into an argument about music and decided to hate each other's guts.

Later, Najash invited her moirail Tolero to play Sgrub with her. The two of them connected as server and client, and Najash immediately began ruining Tolero's room. She deployed the game machinery and opened the cruxtruder by whacking it with Tolero's recuperacoon. Tolero was a little freaked out by the Kernelsprite when it emerged, so Najash, trying to be helpful, threw the recuperacoon at it. She missed and took out a wall, waking Tolero's hibernating lusus Ursa. Tolero ran off to fight Ursa.

Najash, bored out of her skull now that Tolero was no longer playing the game, messed around in her room for a while, writing Karkat blackrom slashfic and lamenting the existence of her brother Apysur. She finally contacted her friend Tronno and asked him if he wanted to play. Tronno was excited about the game and agreed to be her server. Tolero also began talking to Tronno, welcoming him to the team. Tronno then invited his moirail Vladis to play, berating him for sleeping all the time.

Meanwhile, Tronno's friend Aliesh found an interesting crystal and decided to bring it to Tronno, mainly as an excuse to visit the troll she was extremely flush for. When she messaged Tronno to tell him she was coming, he mentioned the game and how he had been talking to a "polite" girl named Tolero. Seething with jealousy, Aliesh trolled Tolero and told her to stay away from Tronno. Tolero had no idea what was going on.

Elsewhere on Alternia, Marnix's hive was being bombarded by meteors. Having heard from other people on Trollslum that the game was the only way to survive, and knowing that Najash was currently in a session, Marnix trolled her asking to join the team. Remembering their earlier argument and not understanding the connection between Sgrub and the end of the world, Najash instantly shot him down.

Najash stole her brother's copy of Trollian and called a team meeting to discuss giving their session a cool name. While they were debating, Marnix joined the discussion from five hours in the future to complain about how the name they had picked was stupid. He refused to tell them what the name was for fear of causing a paradox, inadvertently inspiring the team to name themselves Team Paradox... somewhat paradoxically. Najash turned on her berserker rage music and banhammered Marnix, then screamed at everyone and was generally a pain until Tolero reminded her to turn it off again.

Near the end of the conversation Aliesh finally arrived at Tronno's hive, and he went to let her inside. Aliesh was happy to assist Tronno in playing Sgrub.

Najash asked Tolero to invite Marnix to play, because she wanted to use the game to beat him into the dust and prove her superiority, but didn't want Marnix to know that she wanted him to play. During the conversation it was hinted at that Najash was extremely caliginous for Marnix, whereas Tolero was slightly flush. Both denied this. Tolero then contacted Marnix and asked him to join their team. After agreeing to be his server, she realized that she only had two hours and fifty-eight minutes left on her timer, and told Marnix to hold his horses while she figured out what she was supposed to be doing. Almost immediately afterward she was wracked by guilt.

After hearing a crash and seeing a bright flash of light just outside her hive, Najash went to the window and saw meteors falling from the sky, and a smoldering crater where her nearest neighbor, Gamzee Makara, used to live. Unaware of his departure to the Land of Tents and Mirth, she told Tolero he had died, and the two of them held a small, sarcastic funeral.

Vladis began placing the game machines around Tronno's hive. He put the cruxtruder in Tronno's room but for some reason put everything else on the roof. Tronno climbed up to look at it and was momentarily distracted by the view, while Vladis and Aliesh stayed behind and very carefully opened the cruxtruder.

Marnix installed the game and stared at the screen in a manner suggesting that he and Najash were made for each other. He wasted no time in setting up Vladis's machines, boasting that he was a far more efficient server than Najash. Vladis was not impressed. Marnix opened the cruxtruder by bashing it with Vladis's recuperacoon, getting sopor slime everywhere. Vladis was doubly not impressed.

Tolero finally returned to playing the game, only to discover that her favorite toy, Eminence Rey, had been damaged when Najash was messing around in her room. She berated Najash about it while mending the doll, only to have it yanked out of her hands when Najash decided Eminence needed to have an epic battle with the Kernelsprite. She accidently prototyped it, but got back on good terms with Tolero because the sprite was no longer so unnerving.

While Aliesh examined the cruxite dowel she'd retrieved from the cruxtruder, Vladis saw a lightning strike outside of his hive and went to investigate. His lusus, Presbyte, had been crushed by a falling tree. In a touching series of last goodbyes, Vladis promised to devour its head, as was the family tradition. He retrieved the head and returned to his hive to explain to Tronno what to do with his machines, referring to several incomplete walkthroughs he'd found online. His own Kernelsprite seemed oddly attracted to Presbyte's head.

Meanwhile, a huge meteor was bearing down on Marnix's hive. After hearing an explosion, he went outside to see the remains of his massive lusus lying in an impact crater. After panicking, Marnix realized that it was only his guardian's exoskeleton, and that the real Skorpidad was safe and sound below ground.

Still on his roof, Tronno noticed meteors headed for his hive as well.

Tolero also saw a meteor on a collision course with her hive. Najash noticed the connection between the meteor and Tolero's timer, and advised her to continue playing the game in hopes that winning would stop it. Meanwhile, she went to wake Ursa and get her out of harm's way. Ursa had fallen asleep on top of the alchemiter, and when Najash shook the machine in an attempt to wake her, she accidentally activated it and sent a laser beam through Ursa's head. To hide the evidence she prototyped the Reysprite with Tolero's dead lusus.

Years in the future, but not many... An exile with a mechanical arm, leg, and eye travels across the sands of Alternia, the symbol for the South Wind in Mahjong on his shroud and the tattered remains of Tolero's belt clutched in his hand. He comes across a Sgrub station buried in the sand.

Back in the present, Tronno noticed something strange at the base of his hive. Jumping down several stories to get a closer look, he discovered that it was the dead body of his lusus Bardoro.

Meanwhile, out at sea, Najash's lusus Snakemom and her brother Apysur were injured in a meteor strike. Looking out her window, Najash saw meteors raining down and decided to go looking for them.

Aliesh, who had just finished carving a totem with the prepunched card, brought it upstairs and found Tronno in tears over the loss of his lusus. He was too upset to bring the totem back to his roof, so Aliesh used her hydrokinesis to transport them both, unaware of Tronno's hydrophobia. Vladis tried to help by bringing Bardoro's body, but he fell asleep at his computer and dropped it onto Tronno's kernelsprite, first-tier prototyping it.

Najash at last found her lusus and brother. Apysur was bleeding badly, but when she tried to approach him Snakemom attacked her. In desperation, Najash strangled her lusus in order to save her brother.

As he was returning to his hive, Marnix looked up to see a gargantuan meteor descending. He tried to get ahold of the rest of the team, but due to their various crises, no one was responding. In his panic he fell out of his chair, accidentally sending a recuperacoon through Vladis's wall.

Vladis at last began eating Presbyte's head, but when he offered some to his kernelsprite he accidentally prototyped it.

Najash and Apysur returned to their hive to see that Tronno had placed the cruxtruder in a pool of water in front of the front door. They were trapped outside until the water caused the machine to short-curcuit and explode, starting Najash's countdown and demolishing part of the wall. Najash deposited Apysur in her recuperacoon and proceeded to change out of her bloody clothes.

Aliesh, concerned about Tronno's skittish behavior, contacted Vladis to ask what he was so afraid of. Vladis dodged the question, having promised not to tell anyone about Tronno's fear of water.

At last Tolero responded to Marnix and began setting up the game machines in his hive. She opened his cruxtruder by carefully deleting part of the floor above it and causing his couch to fall on it. She then went back to her own game, creating lots of cruxite dowels while her timer ticked down to two minutes. After some experimentation with the machines, she finally created her entry item, an unfinished book. Reasoning that she had to complete the book in order to solve the puzzle and stop the meteor, Tolero bit her thumb and wrote the last word in her own blood, entering the Medium mere seconds before her meteor struck.