@Kromer || audio

[gripper]

( Kromer's decided she quite doesn't like this place. It doesn't seem like her opinion is an unpopular one, looking at other posts that have cropped up, so that's great. Wonderful when all of humanity is on the same page.

smile.

A whistle comes through the phone first, then her voice. It's a little on the grating side. )

Testing, testing.... Looks like this works! How wonderful.

( It might also be a little familiar to certain people, too. )

What an interesting situation we've found ourselves in. ( "interesting". ) It looks like some of you are already starting to get to know each other a little and make allies, huh? Ahahaha...

( ...... )

Since everyone else is posing questions, let me do a few too. Did you get a waste-of-time text before you left the train? What did you answer? What is your "business"? What Nest are you from? And finally, of course, the most important question of them all...

( Kromer pauses deliberately, relishing in her own dramatics. )

Have we any heretics among our number? I'm looking forward to hearing your responses.

[ ooc: a reminder that her opt-out is here! i'd highly encourage at least glancing at it. ]

Comments

@DONQUIXOT3

[icanfixer]

[ it's hard for one of their number in particular to forget kromer, but it isn't like she made a great impression on any of the other sinners; don quixote doesn't see what she does as justice either, not in this life, and the ID presses against her mind like a cat before she shuts it out. ]

Keep thy lips shut tight, villain! Thou hasn't impede upon justice here, but mine eyes shalt keep a close watch on thee!

[ kromer does not know nor care but please. she sounds serious. she won't on sight the woman but she's on thin ice. ]

[gripper]

( Kromer's quiet for a little bit, trying to place the voice to a name. A face. Ahhh, wait... Sinclair made friends, didn't he? This must be one of them. )

I'm only asking questions like everyone else, little ratlet. Is that illegal now?

[icanfixer]

[ ah... ]

Um, nay, it is not. [ not technically... ] But, ehm, thy questions are somewhat provocative! With the heretics bit, and all. There is nary a person who wouldst call themselves that.

[ ye... yeah!!! she can bring issue to that!!! ]

To answer thy query, I... said I was here to deliver justice upon the unjust, though I do not know how I had come to be upon a train not mine own in the first place.

[gripper]

( Complaint lodged and subsequently thrown aside. Thanks! )

Were you on that depressing little bus of yours before?

text; un: keter

[gradenine]

[ nest? so op is from that hellish city too, huh... this only fortifies roland's theory of their situation being some experiment of some wing, but - ]

don't think anyone's obligated to post their answers to that in the open
also, why do our nests matter? you some kinda big shot from a wing or something?

[gripper]

( Text, huh...? Well, if he's from the same place as her, then maybe he doesn't want her to identify him. Is he worried about that? ufu.

She likes the sound of her own voice, so she continues with audio. )

Come now, Keter. I'm only trying to get to know people, just like anyone else! I don't think they were such terrible questions, either. Donquixothree was quite excited to volunteer her answers, besides.

( ... )

And you could say that. I am the One Who Grips.

audio

[gradenine]

[ squints... that still sounds pretty suspicious? but roland supposes that anyone who isn't the brightest bulb in the box can be fooled, huh.

there's a pause, as if to consider kromer's words. but then a male voice pops up, incredulously so: ]

The one who what?

[gripper]

( Hm. No recognition. A nobody, then? )

The One Who Grips. ( said quite deliberately. ) Though I suppose those outside of the Nest would recognize "a leader of N Corp's Hammers" quicker.



( but please. Refer to her Only as her proper title. )

/3

[halbird]

[ for all the anxiety that being Kidnapped can give someone (Him. that someone is him), the afters of the confusing beginning are almost terribly mundane. or, quiet? scrolling through the network, not having to stab someone, though the uncomfortable feeling of it all still pricks at him instinctively, as it does—

—until it all culminates and builds into a wave that crashes into him very, very suddenly. his stomach sinks as the memories grip him in tandem with that voice, and for a moment he isn't here. he's in a bloodied house. he's in his burning hometown. he's on a mountain of bodies and, certain as her bad haircut, he saw her...

so, it's not.

it couldn't be.

(ignoring the irony of that statement in context) ]

■■■■■!

[halbird]

[ yet the more she talks, the more he listens. his hands turning white as he holds the phone with increasing intensity. the familiarity of everything strikes him in clear echoes, amplified by the curse of her whistle.

the fear

the hatred

the anger

the guilt— ]

3/3 i hate you also text, un: vogel

[halbird]

[ —the fact she hasn't changed, at all, which is the least surprising thing about all of this. but, ah, he has. he has.

even more than he had back then.

even if he isn't certain it's her, given the facts.

even if his fingers still tremble as he cobbles together a response through his racing mind.

he has to know. whatever she is... whether it be this city messing with him or not, he can't run. he can't. ]

Is... this a joke?

[ the great thing about text is that no one has to know it took him a little longer than it should have to get that out.

except he knows. right up to the answer to that question he asks, He Knows. ]

"i hate you" but you're the one encouraged me to app her? excuse me?

[gripper]

( She laughs— or, she almost starts, catching her derisive noise and turning it into the softest breath through her nose.

And then she sees the username, curls her mouth into a smile, and laughs for real. She'd seen that name recently, carved on a certain someone's halberd. She shouldn't jump to conclusions, even if the disbelief bleeding through the typed words on her phone's screen reeks of a certain someone, and her laughter gently falls to the wayside.

Well. Gently, for her.

Kromer doesn't bother to switch; she didn't for Keter, after all. She has nothing to hide—or no reason to hide, more specifically. )

Could it be...? ( The soft croon of her voice, the carefree cruelty she reserves for him settled just beneath it. ) My Sinclair is here as well?

( A pause, and: )

"She should be dead." Is that what you're thinking, Sinclair? One of your little friends let that slip.

what is hate but another side of love

[halbird]

[ yeah, that sure is it. his gaze lingers on the screen, the thousand things he can say coming and going with the myriad of emotions, letters piecing together, falling apart.

she doesn't switch, but... sinclair does. he makes sure to let out the ragged breath building within him before the moment he shows he doesn't have to hide either. because— ]

You...

[ —she's dead. she died. her being here and tugging at the things within his mind, as usual, doesn't change the way that conclusion settles within him. it doesn't. ]

Kromer... [ how that name comes out as it always does. taut, threatening to snap in two. ] You should be. You are.

@blackwater / video.

[ex_sink985]

Pick one.

[ It's not great video? He doesn't seem to understand the camera. However he does realize he should clarify maybe. ]

One question.

[ She posed too many. ]

[gripper]

( If he's going to use the camera function, he should learn to use it properly. She isn't switching to show him how, though, good luck with that buddy. )

Was that too many at once? I'll pose them to you one at a time, then. ( Kromer's cpable of accommodating... even if the polite, but firm, edge to her voice does not give any leeway for refusing to answer more than just the one overall. She wants answers, she'll have them. ) Did you get a text when you first arrived here that you had to answer, with all sorts of inane questions?

[ex_sink985]

I did. It asked for personal information at first, then posed hypotheticals. It would only proceed if I used the characters on the screen to respond to the questions in real words.

[gripper]

What did you define your business as?

( ...In a show of good will, or what passes for it for normal people, she'll tell hers: )

I said I had none, because I don't. Wonderful that it accepted such an answer.

audio;

[nutbuckets]

I got that text!

Dunno what nest I'm from, and I don't know what a heretic is either, sorry.

[gripper]

( Then either she's one of those "non-City" people Keter mentioned, or she's from the Backstreets. Either is fine. Kromer only discriminates about purity of flesh not about how rich or poor someone is. Isn't that great. )

Ah, someone willing to answer without issue! How nice. ( everyone else here fighting her about it... sometimes literally... ) What business did you state having here? I'm collecting such information... It may lead us to an answer as to why we specifically are here, and no one else.

( ...

Well, that isn't an untrue statement at all, actually. )

[nutbuckets]

Oh uh, sure, why not? I don't got no secrets or nothin'.

[Should she? Why is everyone else giving her trouble about this?]

I just said 'you tell me' because I don't got a clue why I'm here.

[gripper]

( Good girl! Good girl. )

Ahahaha, then you and I are of the same mind...! Though I said I had no business whatsoever, because I don't. What were you up to before here?

text; un: summer

[killed]

[ thinkin abt him a heretic ]

Yes, I received it. It's labeled as an orientation, but it wasn't much of one. It was a simple questionnaire, but is it really a waste of time? You can learn a lot about a person by how they answer simple questions, just as you can learn a lot from how people respond now.

It's unfortunate, but I was a bit disorientated upon arrival, so I'm afraid I don't remember all the questions it asked, but I don't have any business here. I'd like to know what business it has with me as much as anyone else.

I'm not a religious man. Does that make me a heretic?

wait sorry i forgot shes an asshole who never switches. sorry.

[gripper]

( imagine living in a world that has religion. not that's not fair, the city has religion, it's just. things are complicated. what isn't complicated is how to answer the question though. )

No. Heresy, to me, isn't based on whether you believe in a higher power or not, but how willing you are to part from the purity of the flesh.

( is that better? is that worse? )

it's fine he needs a woman to put him in his place tbh

[killed]

[ boy that does sure sound like an unfortunate cult but who is he to judge ]

That is to say, a person modifying their body is blasphemy? Is that common where you're from? I've only ever seen it in patients who were in need of prosthetics, and I would say they would have preferred not to need them.

help not put him in his plaaaace

[gripper]

Oh, you could say it was all the rage. People replacing their entire bodies with cold metal, forsaking that pain which reminds us we're alive and human in the first place...

( her voice, swinging a little high and sweet, spits the words like they're poison. )

Wouldn't you say that's a crime? Bear in mind, now, that these people didn't need it. ( ...she doesn't particularly like people who think they need it either, but at least they're replacing something they lost rather than deciding they want a new head or something, made of steel and wires. where's the individuality in that? the humanity? there is none: just the blank face and mechanical voicebox of a robot, the same as any other robot out there. ) There's personal freedom, and then there's desecration.