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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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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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