I wasn't planning to upload this piece, being convinced that it was unsalvageable; it suffered from that all-too-common bastardisation of troll dialogue, which I will now term Too Many Fucks Syndrome. But I cleared most of that out and it turns out there's a few gems of writing hidden beneath. Some TMFS still stubbornly remains attached though, like a barnacle. My hope is that it doesn't render the whole thing unstomachable.
I used to write in a very concise style, so there was an attempt here at injecting some flourish. It's alright, but I didn't seem to understand it required more than just moving around the punctuation. Surprised at some of the in-comic details I included, though to be fair, they were probably significant at the time. (Other details are missing - for one, I suppose I should be using the term swimbeasts - but I feel there's a line at which I might as well stop.)

Wasn't happy with any method of presenting Sollux's pronunciation, so I settled on a mixture that felt right to me. It's the same method I use for my Homestar Runner fanfictions, albiet far less consistent.
It should be noted I didn't have a clue how to write most of these characters, and probably still don't. Eh, I'm doing better than at least one fan out there.

Written late 2010 - mid 2011, age 16 or almost that old. This was back when these characters were approximately the most important.

/-/-

The door to the captain's bridge swings open; a nubby-horned troll strides through to the deck. He's been pacing back and forth for several hours now. The trolls outside idly turn their heads towards him; he gives them death glares: "Hey, shitheads, got anything yet?"

"Karkles I think it's about time someone swaps shifts," Terezi cackles, loud and gleeful; she rises from her beach chair, taps her fishing rod. "Talk to the alien fish instead of us; maybe they're attracted to your lunatic rage! Hehehehehe!" Her shrieks pierce the air, and Karkat growls, shoving her away from her post. "Aww, did I offend you? Poor little wriggler! Anyone know how Gamzee's doing?"

On the other side of the boat, Kanaya shakes her head. "He hasn't surfaced for a while now; perhaps he has chanced upon the school of aquatic creatures we are looking for," she muses. Tavros is equally uncertain; he stands up, unsteady on the boat's rocking surface, and leans over to the sparkling waters below.

"G... Gamzee?" he calls. "Come back up if you, uhh... see me?" He tries to wave to the ocean, beckoning towards their ship, but there is no response.

Karkat twitches as he sees the display: "What do you think that'll do?! We'll get Sollux to find him," he mutters, sprinting back into the bridge, door flapping as he enters; in mere seconds it's sent swinging open again, the two shouting at each other as they storm out.

"No I abtholutely cannot fucking 'mind detect' people," Sollux snarls to his associate. "You may thlightly have my powers wrong, in fact you may have everybody'th powers wrong."

"Are you kidding me? I'm like, a hundred-fucking-percent positive you've done it before!"

"Get your percentages checked, you useleth thit!"

"They've all been checked, and they all return a big fucking 'DING-DING-DING! Karkat, yes you're absolutely right, if the emaciated theoric won't even lift a finger the least he could do is cooperate with the rest of us'."

"I think I'd know if I had a fucking Gamzee-radar. Your notions of believable thiionic prowess theem woefully mithcalibrated, much like the retht of your thitty programming."

"YOU DID NOT JUST SAY THAT! YOU HAVE CROSSED A LINE!"

Terezi starts to scream with laughter, the perfect maniacal backdrop to the inane debate. Tavros glances at Kanaya; she just shrugs, returns to her fishing. He starts to do the same, when he sees a faint, familiar sihouette in the water. The boy grins; he knows who it is.

"HEY motherfuckers so I forgot how to swim for a bit but it's all good now," Gamzee calls out as his head bursts through the water. His makeup's washed off, leaving pale white stains on his face. "Holy shit, you have to see what is down here, there's all these crazy tiny creatures and they ain't deadly at all; I'm just like fuckin' hell ya'll wanna hang out a lil'? and then they just zip around everywhere, AT THE SAME TIME you don't even know, I was tripping out hard -"

"Gamzee you stupid piece of SHIT!" Karkat splutters, running up to the boat's edge. "We asked you to tell us where the fish were, not to hold a fucking miracle party down there! Jegus I bet you scared all of them off with your hideous face!"

"Bro you just gotta chillax a lil', I totally saw where they went. They're just right over..." The troll dives back underwater, only to come back up a short while later. "... Never mind, looks like they got... a lil' fucked up."

"What?" Sollux yells. "Gamzee we will very much mind. Get out of the water!" Kanaya, in the meantime, runs over to the ship's rickety rope ladder, which descends all the way down to the water.

"Over here, Gamzee!" The troll snaps back to attention upon hearing his name; he thankfully spots the ladder, and kicks his way towards it. When he finally manages to climb onboard, Terezi and Tavros are there to wrap him up in a towel.

"What... what the heck happened?" Tavros stutters, the most visibly nervous.

"More importantly," interrrupts Karkat from across the deck, "where the fuck's your CLOTHES?!"

"Oh, my clothes," he says, apparently just noticing. "Fuckin', they were... hard to swim in."

"At least you still have your underwear on!" Terezi grins. "Or is that 'too bad', Karkles?"

"What the shit?! Thanks for obliterating the remnants of my think pan -"

"Thut it, KK!" Sollux barks. "What did you see? They told us it was safe here!"

"I dunno, there was this one thing like a fish, like all the other fishes, except a lot fuckin' larger," Gamzee frowns. "And it... bit through them."

"WHAT?!" everyone shouts, with various levels of 'THE FUCK' attached. Terezi shakes herself out of it. "Exactly how much is 'larger'?"

"No fuckin' idea. Could be two, three times my size."

"That's not too bad," Karkat mutters, "but who knows what it could do? Shit! If we were still in Sburb, there'd be no problem at all -"

Right on cue, the fishing rod next to them tugs slightly.

/-

'AAAAAAAA HOLY FUCK AAAAAAAAAAAAA' ends up being an appropriate summary of events: the rod is promptly thrown overboard, and the small ship is steered to shore as fast as everyone can fucking handle. By the time it hits the coastline, everybody is just about ready to fling themselves off, and they do exactly that.

"Wow, that was... intense," Tavros sighs, dropping onto dry sand and rolling onto his back. "Are we, uh... are we sure it was anything like the monsters on Alternia?"

"Tell me, Tavvy," Terezi grins, sitting herself next to him. "Have we seen any silly Earth species nearly as dangerous as that? Of course it was harmless! HeheheheHAHAHAHA!"

"Okay, just what in the everloving nook did you say?" Karkat snarls, last to exit the boat, but first to reach Terezi and furiously press his face against hers. "Why didn't you think of this earlier? Why didn't you stop us from toot-tooting forty fucking minutes back to LAND?!"

"Because," she smirks, and she accepts his challenge; leaning closer into him, breathing louder, just so he can hear it, and she can smell him tensing up ever-so-slowly, "... Because it's funny!"

"FUCK YOU, TEREZI, FUCK YOU," he shrieks, again and again while she just laughs it off as raucously and spine-chillingly as she always does. When he's finally done, he tries to glare at her one last time, before kicking up a few clouds of sand and sulkingly dropping next to Kanaya. While they were arguing, she and Sollux have laid themselves down on the beach as well: a line of grey creatures, alone on the shore.

Kanaya lets Karkat fume for a while before she strikes up conversation. "So, how are you finding dinurnal enterprise so far," she asks, watching the pure-white clouds.

"Oh. You mean... the sun, right?" Karkat falls back onto the sand, looking skywards with her. "I dunno. It's... colourful. I'm sure it's what you're used to."

"Yes but this world is much different," she replies, smiling, knowing. "Not only does it host a myriad of fascinatingly docile creatures, everything down to the smallest specifics are tangibly foreign, and even the society the humans have procured for themselves is of infinite interest. Are you not enthralled by this experience as well?"

"There's not that much to it, really," he grumbles, before being subject to her judging stare. "... It's alright."

"That's what I thought," she smiles.

The sun shines brightly as the world floats on by.

"... It is a bit cold, is the only discomfort."

"Kanaya, what. Excuse us if no one else wanted your blistering sun."