Act 6 Intermission 4, part of Act 6, is titled Dead. The act follows Caliborn as he enters the Medium, meets a new ally and learns more about the game session he is destined to play.
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- The intermission curtains are shown rusted and ruined as Caliborn traverses his land. A Statue of Liberty can be seen in the background. The blood is gone, wiped off with pages of Calliope's book that Caliborn leaves in a trail behind him. The page featuring Meenah and Vriska's strife lies at his feet.
- Caliborn relishes in his new found freedom, and it is revealed he has never walked so far in his life (while awake). This implies that he never left the room before. He looks back on his house and ponders why only the Cruxtruder could be deployed before turning his focus to the lack of gates above his house. This further implies the cherubs' session is unusual, even for an apparently null session. Turning his gaze further upward he looks at Skaia and Prospit and wonders if the Prospitians have thrown Calliope's dream self a funeral yet and if Jack is still up there, and makes plans to meet up with him.
- Caliborn starts walking across the planet and realises it was the same one he had been on all his life. Confused and bored he continues walking and having introspective thoughts when he notices a blinking red light in the distance.
- Caliborn's thoughts are interrupted again when Roxy leaves a message on Gamzee's laptop, which Calliope had in their shared sylladex. Though Roxy mentions Calliope's name in the message, it fails to put Caliborn to sleep since Calliope is dead. Caliborn puts the computer down and walks away from it while the rest of Roxy's message is shown. In it, she recaps the events that led up to the post-Scratch kids entering their game session.
- Roxy continues her message to Calliope, which she has apparently been doing with Jake's phone. Roxy mentions that she made a new firefly friend who she has named Twinkly Herbert. She then notices that her friends are fighting and ends the chat to deal with the drama.
- Caliborn nears the source of the red light, which is a strange looking radio tower covered in screens, and looks none too pleased. Gamzee appears in front of him in god tier garb, sporting wings this time, and offers to be his guide. Caliborn wastes no more than a few seconds before shooting him for the next five minutes with his machine gun.
- Caliborn continues to shoot Gamzee while walking away from him. Gamzee is shot dozens of times before finally collapsing onto the ground, then a few more afterwards. Both of his wings fall off in the process.
- With Gamzee down, Caliborn turns his attention to the tower. At the tower's base, there is a second, smaller tower covered in locks, as well as a computer terminal showing the omniscient narration and commands for Homestuck. Caliborn stares at it angrily while the narration insults him and asserts that he feels guilty about killing Gamzee, and is even crying about it. For the first time ever, the MSPA logo is shown in-comic (more specifically, it can be seen inside the red lightbulb at the top of the larger tower).
- Caliborn uses the terminal and tells the narration to shut up. It refuses because then no one would be around to describe Caliborn's thoughts. Caliborn gets into an argument with the narrator and complains that the keyboard won't let him use his quirk because the caps lock key is stuck on. The narration explains that in order to unlock most of the tower's features, like the ability to turn off caps lock, the user must find keys to use on the various locks. It then makes fun of Caliborn for not using caps lock when his quirk involves capitalizing almost every letter, and Caliborn reluctantly reveals that he isn't good at learning new things.
- Caliborn accepts typing everything capitalized and the narrator discusses Caliborn's antics and reveals that by killing Calliope instead of letting the internal conflict within them settle naturally he has stunted his growth as a person. Caliborn begins to find the similarity between his and the Narrator's text colors annoying and the narrator tells him he can change his text color by turning on the monitors and once again berates Caliborn for shooting Gamzee saying he could have helped him with the tower. The Narrator then reveals that Gamzee is still alive and
apparently a god tier, despite his fake wingsmaybe not a god tier, but who can really say for sure? After the Narrator almost gives away that Gamzee is the most important character in Homestuck, Gamzee crawls up to Caliborn and gives him a Skaianet computer hub to power the tower's monitors. Caliborn guns him down a second time, but becomes irritated by the music ♫ that plays whenever he shoots Gamzee. The narrator tells Caliborn to either deal with the music or grow up and stop shooting Gamzee. - Caliborn plugs in the tower to the Skaianet computer hub, and all of the monitors activate. However, only the unlocked one is showing an image: a view of Calliope's dead dream self. Caliborn remembers his desire to color his words with Calliope's blood and decides to change his text color, as well as permanently incorporate her capital "U"s into his quirk. The narrator tells him that he can choose a color by using the computer's wireless mouse and sampling some pixels from the monitor display. Unfortunately for Caliborn, the mouse is an awkward-to-use trackball mouse that is welded to the counter, forcing him to use the trackball to select anything. Gamzee watches Caliborn twisting his body in order to watch the monitor and use the mouse at the same time.
- Caliborn samples Calliope's blood color for his text while vowing to one day kill the Narrator. The narrator reveals that Caliborn has already killed him in the future and he is now a ghost, confirming that he is indeed Andrew Hussie. Caliborn's text color selection is initally too dark, so Hussie tells him to bump up the brightness, then double checks the hex code of the color and tells him that it's correct. Hussie proceeds to tell Caliborn that Gamzee has another present for him, and that this one is really important.
- Caliborn receives the crowbar from Gamzee. Caliborn asks Hussie why Gamzee is doing this; Hussie explains that even he doesn't understand Gamzee's motives, and while the crowbar is important he isn't sure if Gamzee knows its real significance. He chooses not to reveal what the crowbar's actual purpose is when Caliborn asks why it is so important, so Caliborn proceeds to start smacking Gamzee around with it. Hussie blasts the elevator music as punishment. Caliborn then attacks the MSPA command tower with it, affecting the entire website. Hussie offers to give him more information about his quest if he agrees to stop hitting the tower.
- Caliborn demands that Hussie tell him everything about his quest. Hussie refuses, saying that Caliborn must solve some puzzles by himself, but reveals some information: Caliborn's planet is actually a post-apocalyptic Earth that was moved out of its doomed universe and sent to a new planetary system. Caliborn must find the keys to unlock the door to the subterranean lair of his denizen, Yaldabaoth, who will offer him 'The Choice' and allow him to begin Sburb's most difficult session. This session is a dead session, which is one where Skaia will never be able to create a new universe, even with the intervention of players from other sessions. Caliborn replaces his missing tooth with a piece of candy corn from the website's navbar before Hussie notices that Gamzee appears to be very ill.
- Gamzee vomits blood with the words 'HoOoRnK.' Hussie threatens to play the music again as punishment for reducing Gamzee to this state when Caliborn realizes that Gamzee is actually throwing up a set of keys he had swallowed previously. This surprises Hussie, and he wonders if the keys might work on the tower.
- Caliborn tries using the keys on the mini tower and unlocks another screen. This one shows Jake on the Land of Mounds and Xenon in the post-scratch kids' game session. Caliborn uses the other keys on different screens and brings up pictures of Dirk on the Land of Tombs and Krypton and Jane and Roxy on the Land of Pyramids and Neon. Hussie becomes disturbed when Caliborn starts fantasizing about Jane and Roxy snuggling and decides to lock out the narrative prompt, leaving Caliborn alone with Gamzee, whom he has (reluctantly) accepted as his new servant.
- Caliborn unlocks another screen, showing the kids' version of Jack Noir, who is still imprisoned in the Prospit jail, and incidentally also sporting a replacement canine tooth: the broken-off tip of his spike knife. This causes him to break into a huge menacing grin, and Gamzee knowledgeably puts a hand on his shoulder.
- The curtains close on Act 6 Intermission 4.
Trivia[]
- The name of the Act reflects the nature of Caliborn's session; Dead.