Through Broken Glass

Act 6 begins on Earth on the flip side of the Scratch. In this version of Earth, the four kids who will play Sburb are the ones who were known as Nanna, Mom, Bro, and Grandpa before the Scratch. Their lives, and the lives of the original kids, are different this time.

It is the day of Crockercorp’s exclusive Sburb Alpha playtest and rebranding rollout. They change their signature red spoon logo to a culling fork. Few on Earth recognize this fork as a symbol of alien imperial condescension until it is too late.

The company heiress, Jane Crocker, has become an assassination target. Grounded for her own safety, Jane endures the pesterings of her online friends while waiting for the game to arrive in the mail.

On the verge of sneaking out, Jane takes a moment to tell her friend Jake about a dream she had. Waking on Prospit’s moon, which a cheerful alien had described to her, Dream Jane found a state funeral happening and saw that Dream Jake was dead.

Confronted with full fatherly lockdown, Jane enlists a gift from her friend Dirk, the sleek robo bunny Lil Seb, to help her break out of the house. Lil Seb lifts the refrigerator barricading the front door and smashes it through the wall.

Jane scampers out to the mailbox and is engulfed in a letter bomb explosion.

Jake English lives alone on a volcanic island stocked with terrifying lusus naturae. With no guardian to keep Jake out of the neighbouring mystic frog ruins, he has used the technology in the ruins to pester his ectodaughter Jade, who he believes to be his dead Grandma in her youth.

Cheered on by the uracil-themed alien, Jake has been helping Jade with her robo bunny plush, which he calls Terry Kiser. Jake needs uranium fuel so he can meet the deadline for Terry’s delivery. The only fuel left on the island is inside Jake’s elusive mechanical sparring partner, Brobot, a gift from Dirk.

When Jake goes out to hunt Brobot down, he is beset by wild lusus including a crabdad and a colossal capricornus. Jake is helpless before the Old Goat when Brobot flies out of nowhere and decapitates it.

Having broken through the Fourth Wall on their golden battleship, Jade and John find themselves in a space between two portals. Traveling near light speed, they cannot see that they are in the Author’s apartment. One portal is set up to let the kids escape their scratched session, and the other is to admit them into a new session.

Hussie measured out the gap between these Fourth Walls with a yardstick, giving him the three nanoseconds he had vowed to confine his meddling to. His ultrafast robotic avatar uses this interval to shower the kids with god tier level ups.

Unfortunately for Jade and John, when Jade enlarged the fourth wall she also enlarged the space on the other side relative to themselves, greatly lengthening their passage through author-land. They will experience it as a journey of three years.

Jade’s inheritance of First Guardian power gives John a brief opportunity to leave the ship and join the others at the Green Sun. John declines, opting to write them a letter instead. Davesprite helps.

Previously, the trolls determined they could escape to a new session by piloting their lab out into the Furthest Ring. Sollux overexerted and killed himself to give the rock the psionic push it needed to reach the newly created Green Sun. His half-ghost (don’t ask) joined Aradia there for a rendezvous with many of their friends. They met Rose and Dave, who rose up out of the Sun as gods, and lingered there for three more arrivals.

First to arrive are Karkat, Kanaya, Terezi, and Gamzee, the lab’s survivors. They all get acquainted and talk about dead pals and the limitless inferno. Gamzee sneaks back inside, adding the bodies of Sollux and Vriska to his corpse hoard. When Rose points the way to the promising new session created by the Scratch, Aradia and Sollux decide to quit and live in the dream bubbles instead. Rose persuades Kanaya to stay for the trip and try reviving her species again. By the will of the Gods, their journey through the Furthest Ring will take three years.

Second, the letter from John, Jade, and Davesprite. The letter’s comradely sentiment is undermined by the boner of sending it in a container that is disgusting taboo to trolls. Karkat gets a faceful and has a mental breakdown.

Third, the Mayor. Previously, having gained Jack Noir’s matching powers, the Prospitian Monarch escaped with Serenity and the dying Wayward Vagabond to the trolls’ session. Noir has just murdered the Genesis Frog, the very act that forced his escape from that universe, when the angry Monarch arrives. The Monarch is eager to chase Noir down and take revenge, but Serenity begs her to help the Vagabond first. She does this by teleporting Serenity and the Vagabond to the meteor, where they will find someone to heal him.

Jack Noir flees across the void, and the Monarch follows.