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Who| Karkat and Roland, Karkat and Nepeta, Karkat and Felicity
What| After Hans' discussion gets out of hand, Karkat has people to talk to.
Where| District Four, District Two, elsewhere???
When| the day of Hans' discussion
Warnings/Notes| There'll be three separate threads, which I'll put up in the order they occur. This way I don't have to spam the comm!

It had taken longer than Karkat thought to extricate himself from the discussions Hans had started, even with Bert implying those things he had about Nepeta. But he'd managed to pull himself away from everything in the end and now he was on his way up to D4 to make sure everything was all right and nobody had been infested with anybody's young.

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"We're-- not quite sure," Karkat says. "I mean, we can sort of make guesses about it? We used to think that they just fixed up our bodies somehow, because they try to collect the bodies as soon as we die. But-- but then one time they killed half of everyone right away with poison and didn't collect the bodies, but all of those tributes went somewhere else--so now we know they just don't fix our original bodies up. They do something else. And we don't know for certain what it is."

He bites his lip. "I can tell you my theory, though. I think they have a bunch of copies of our bodies that they make or get when they first kidnap us and they're all asleep, but our mind is still connected to them. Like with Dreamselves. Those were a thing from a thing me and my friends were doing." He doesn't want to exactly explain Sgrub to people, it's way too fucking complicated. "But with Dreamselves someone has to kiss your corpse to make sure you wake up in your dreaming body and it doesn't look like that has to happen here."

It's not a surprise that such things are done, the mass poisonings, but it's certainly not good news. Not as if having to kill each other for sport is any better. Roland listens with narrowed eyes, his mind turning the words over and fitting them against anything he might know.

"In my world, before the civilizations I knew, there came the people we called the Great Old Ones. I've never seen one of their machines make perfect copies of a body, but I think it'd be within their reach. Before their fall, the Old Ones became... twisted. Tainted. It could be these Gamemakers are some twinner kingdom to theirs." He thinks on it another moment. "I wouldn't be surprised. But before we know more, this is all just talk. Who is this 'we' you mentioned? You, Cuthbert... This 'Sign-less'. Nepeta. I'd hear their thoughts on it, if I could."

"Uh," Karkat says, "Shit. By 'we' I sort of meant everyone who'd been around for the double arena. Everyone who was around then knows that they don't need to take the corpses away to bring us back."

He bites his lips. "But, shit, you'd probably want to know about who Bert's in cahoots with anyway? Because of your tet thing. And I dunno how much you know if he didn't say anything about Nepeta. So. Okay. There's me, who you've met, and that Susannah lady, who I guess you already knew, and Nepeta, who's that troll girl on this floor, she's pretty cool but she likes to pretend she's a purrbeast, uh, I mean cat. And he hangs around us trolls because we don't look at him funny for being proud of how good he is at killing people. Well, except for Kankri but Kankri's a shithead. And Signless is another troll. He's genetically related to me and he's really weird, but also pretty much the nicest adult I've ever met. He looks like me but bigger."

"He's proud of the deaths he's dealt for the gamemakers?" The other information was important, but this is the part that needs to be clarified. There's so much about Cuthbert's life Roland doesn't know now. So much, and this may be the most worrying of all of it.

Karkat shrugs. "He acts like he is, anyway. I mean, he doesn't like the Gamemakers any more than the rest of us, but he's good at killing people and he's not ashamed of being good. And where we come from--most of us trolls, except that shithead Kankri--being good at killing people really isn't something to be ashamed of because you usually have to cull someone to make it to adulthood, or else they'll cull you instead. I'd had to do it twice before they grabbed me."

Not to mention however many times he'd must have done it as a grub in the struggle to leave the brooding caverns. Grub stuff didn't count. It's not like he'd been even properly sentient or sapient or whichever it was until after his first moult.

"I mean, okay, I'm not proud of the people I've killed here but two of 'em were kids younger than me and the third was fluffy asshole Sherlock to make up for not being able to save Bert, so there's not actually anything to be proud of."

He doesn't include Sigma in the count because that was a group effort and anyway he'd been still alive when they'd run off. He doesn't count any of the times he'd helped Cuthbert in the double arena either, because Bert had done the actually killing and he'd mostly just helped restrain people.

"But Bert's really good at this. He's taken down adults and has made it to the final week twice." Karkat shrugs again. "I dunno, isn't surviving something to be proud of?"

Roland gives that question the thought it deserves. Spends a second remembering those long years when survival was all there was, and that just a means to the only end that mattered. He shakes his head back and forth, slowly. Frowns. "Only if for a purpose. And even then-- I don't know. Certainly not for amusement. Entertainment." His lips twist in disgust, but he controls the expression quickly. No need for the boy to think that disgust is meant for him, and especially not meant for Cuthbert.

"To capture a gunslinger and make them kill for you... That killing's not something to be proud of. Only to endure." He looks at Karkat then, studying him. Cuthbert's no boy, and maybe this Karkat with is 'culling' isn't one either. But they seem it, suddenly. Children playing with their father's guns and sneaking back later to boast of it. Roland can't remember if he and Cuthbert had ever thought that way when it came to killing, thinks they did once, but now Cuthbert does and he doesn't and the years between them make him dizzy, and doubtful, and more than a little frustrated. That last probably shows in his voice as Roland plants a hand beside him and looks at the floor. "Gods, I don't know. Perhaps it doesn't matter what either of you think of survival so long as you do it."

Roland presses at the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. Well. There goes that effort at making an ally out of Cuthbert's closest friend. Did that need to be said? He has no idea. He wonders if he's thinking clearly enough to even figure that much out.

Karkat bristles, because for some reason he thought maybe people from Bert's world wouldn't be so stupidly holier-than-thou about killing as most humans. "Yeah, well, maybe some of us don't come from shiny fluffy wiggler-safe hugplanets like you do, shitprince."

He glares at Roland at first, but then looks away down at his feet because he knows, actually, from stuff Bert's mentioned that this guy's world is pretty dangerous on its own and really, he hadn't been as bad as some humans about this shit, he hadn't implied that Karkat was unredeemably shitty for having culled, he'd just said doing it for the Capitol's entertainment was nothing to be proud of.

Great. Now he felt kind of shitty for snapping at the old human.

"Back home," he says finally, in a quieter voice, "it really is a matter of survival. After we're hatched, we fight to the death as grubs for the right to leave the caverns and grow up. Once we leave, nobody cares if a bunch of kids cull each other. We're encouraged to, so that only the strongest are left by the time we reach Conscription age. We're expected to be good at killing once we're adults. We're supposed to be proud if we are. Because it means we're Good Trolls. A credit to the Empire."

He looks back up at Roland. "But killing for the Capitol's entertainment isn't killing for the Glory of the Alternian Empire. So, maybe you're right. I don't fucking know. Maybe you should talk to Signless. He's weird and doesn't think you have to be good at killing to be a good Troll or even cull at all. You'd probably like him."

Namecalling has never particularly bothered Roland, and this round of it actually surprises him out of a large part of his frustration. He lifts his face from his hand and stares, looking a little impressed before Karkat starts his explanation. How much of that friendship with Cuthbert was helped along by Cuthbert's appreciation for the creative vocabulary? A fair bit, probably. A lot's changed but probably not that.

"If I see him, maybe I'll seek him out. I'm sure 'weird' is the least of what either of us have been called." Roland twitches a corner of his lips up, thinking maybe he hasn't quite ruined things after all.

"You'll know him when you see him," Karkat says. "He looks like me, only bigger. Kind of like Bert and that mentor guy of his--which is kind of weird, actually--only more so." He peers thoughtfully at Roland before adding, "Hey, you've known Bert since you were both wigglers, right? So you'd know about all the stupid pancracked things he's done, right?" He examines his claws. "Except since he's come here. But I know those."

Roland watches the boy studying those claws of his, watches while he examines the sharp heat making its way through him and identifies it as jealousy. It's the way that last statement is said as much as anything else - so casual. Of course he he knows. Not even in question that this boy knows every detail of Cuthbert's life, while Roland himself is completely ignorant. Roland lets the feeling be, waits a silent moment for it to pass through and out of him. A little of the feeling still clings, but he senses a large part of it go with no hint of regret. Of all the different things swirling inside him at all he's learned, jealousy is a particularly unworthy one. This boy's stood with Cuthbert, protected him as best he can and stayed beside him when, apparently, few others would. It's a particularly good piece of luck - or maybe more, though his thoughts flit quickly away from that - that Bert's found such a person. All the other reactions inside him are more difficult to name, but even in the midst of that Roland does know that he is damned grateful.

He lets a breath go, slowly, and his wooden expression begins to soften.

"I'd know more about this mentor of his, but yes. Since we were in clouts." A corner of his lips twitches up. "Perhaps we can make an even exchange of it. Allies against Cuthbert for his own sake. Trade some stories." He doesn't know much about this boy yet, but that'd be a start.

"Yeah," Karkat says, "that sounds like a good ide-- shit, there's Nepeta. Look, we can talk later, okay? I'll see you around."

He hurries off in the direction of the troll girl with the horns like cat ears who's just entered the room.

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andddd i think we're done