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[ When the video feed starts, it shows Annie in her uniform jacket with a distinctly flat expression that military sorts might recognize as a thousand-yard stare. The silence drags on unreasonably, though she doesn’t give any indication that she thinks it as such. (Hint: She doesn’t.) Finally, she speaks in a tone that's apathetic: ] Is natural gas available in this place? I need it to fill a certain type of canister.

[ Not that she needs it right now, but she lifts one of the canisters from her 3DMG to show it. There's a strategic value to this move by pretending she's lost that advantage. ]

Ah, I should ask after my squad, shouldn’t I? [ She says it almost as an afterthought. So she introduces herself bluntly: ] Annie Leonhart. Stohess District MP, under acting squad leader Marlowe Freudenberg.

[ Because apparently that should do the trick, right? Terse to a fault in such an unusual situation, she abruptly shuts off the feed. ]

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[There is a grey horned teenager on screen. He also stares, letting the silence drag on about as long as she did, albeit with a look that says 'not amused' and 'face stuck this way as a child' rather than 'thousand lawn ring stare'. What use are a thousand lawn rings, anyway?]

[Finally he speaks.]

What's with the staring?

[ Another strange looking person. Huh. It seems like most people weren't human here. ]

Someone could say the same to you, at this point.

[His eyelid twitches, and he states with careful, pointed intonation:]

It was on purpose. I was demonstrating to you how weird and unsettling it is. God, would it kill the arrivals here to use their respective organs designed to process thought, or would literal mass suicide be the result?

If that's what you were doing, you failed.

[ She quirks an eyebrow at him only briefly. ]

You weren't unsettling at all.

[Cue one throaty growl of frustration.]

Then point for me! Of the two of us, somehow the actual fang-bearing alien is the less creepy one. Good job, me! Time for a pat on the back.

[He reaches over his shoulder to do just that, scowling into his screen all the while.]

The point remains: your staring was a waste of time for all involved. What was it for? Does your thought process resemble the boot-up time of ancient, creaking computers best left to scrap heaps and museums of quaint, bygone technology? Or is social awkwardness your personal calling card, and writhing tentacled horrors forbid you not take the opportunity to hand it out via visual non-expression to all comers? Because whatever it was meant to accomplish, it sure wasn't anything useful.

Oh? [ She is secretly queen of social awkwardness, yes, but she looks almost interested now as opposed to blank. Still, it's a muted change of expression. ]

Do you have to understand everything that happens for it to have a purpose? It shouldn't be a problem, not knowing why others act.

[Karkat's glare hardens further. What is her deal? Why is she so bad at getting trolled?]

It's not the sort of situation where I expect a literal answer, you incompetent shitswizzle. No, me not understanding something doesn't deny it of meaning. But that doesn't mean I can't view your stupid blank gawking at the camera as utterly void of purpose.

[ She takes a moment to regard him, though not quite so long as the first time. It might even be to agitate him at this point. ]

Are you always like this?

[If that's her goal, it's working. Look at those fangs baring. Wow, very tooth.]

Yes, as a matter of fact, I am. My irritation at reality and its various facets, aspects, and contents is eternal, given beginning and end solely by the link fastening the cyclic origin of my existence. Never dropping beneath a low simmer, but ready to boil over into scalding fury at a moment's notice. I am wrath's surly incarnation, and to deny my own nature would cause physics themselves to run haywire in protest to this sin against the way things are. I advise you to get used to it.

What's there to get used to? It's not bad.

Most people can't just go in their own direction like that. It's unique.

[Karkat's face does a thing. It's a confused thing, with the whole eyebrows lifting and so on, but it's also kind of not mad now. Was that a compliment??]

If I didn't go in my own direction, I'd be dead.

[Sniff. It's stated pretty plainly.]

[ Perfectly matter of fact: ] Most people would be swept away instead.

[He stares at her wordlessly again, not to make a point, but simply because he's caught in thought. Does she mean that? Does it matter when he was predestined via stable timeloops and the nature of time itself to act the way he did? Are time mechanics irrelevant when they're predicated on individual decisions interacting with one another and, last he knew, he is the alpha Karkat?]

[He settles on this:]

I am decidedly not most people.

You said your name was Annie, right?

[ She's not sure what he's thinking about, but she's really not one to judge taking time to sort through things. She nods, both to the question and to acknowledge his assertion that he's unlike other people. ]

That's right. Annie Leonhart.

Karkat Vantas. So long as you don't do the pointless staring thing again, I can try to answer what I know about this place if you have questions.

[Look at that, Annie: you got him to be helpful.]

Karkat Vantas. [ Said once as if to fix it in her mind. The offer has her focusing more now. She's still flat and a little hazy, but there's a sharpness to her eyes that hadn't been there before. ]

What's your assessment of this situation? This mass conscription?

[He breathes in, huffs out, then starts.]

A clusterfuck arranged by incompetents, but unfortunately not something we can just brush off. Dragging in people from other universes to fight this M grubfucker just because the Emperor says so - or not, since the old one couldn't be bothered to say a word to me when I showed up - is the most disorganized, ineffective way of building an army I have yet to encounter. Speaking of the past Emperor, she was killed in her own chambers in the palace barely a month ago, and the new one is the head of security or something who failed to keep her alive in the first place.

But as it happens, M-douche isn't just some mysterious bad guy made up to scare people into doing shit; if he has his way, he may just destroy reality, from what I've been told. And if he succeeds in that, he may continue on to our own respective worlds to fuck them up too, which is the last thing I need when we already have one freaky demon trying to do just that.

On top of that, before some point in the past, it seems people weren't even told what they were brought here for. The Emperor had to make some special announcement or something. You'd do better to ask people who have been around longer than me.

Lastly, some of us are making efforts to learn more about our situation here, but I don't yet know how effective they've been or who knows what.

[ Annie considers his words with all due gravity, though she honestly doesn't understand a good chunk of the terminology. She gets the gist of it, though.

Her response is as dry as a desert: ]

You realize just how much of a farce that sounds like, don't you?

[Karkat looks back, stern-faced and narrow-eyed.]

No. No, I do not, because my life up to this point has been such a conglomeration of stupidity and ridiculous, over the top chaos that this is nothing. This is normal. This is everyday nonsense for me, and I'm not even going to question the reality of it, because of course it's fucking real. My life does not give me breaks like that.

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