Scene #8886:

Owner	Pose
Petra Soroka	<B-anter> Petra Soroka says, "... Love, do you need a shower? You can come by-- you can come by Quicknest if you need to." <B-anter> Petra Soroka unmutes after a minute, "Okay. I'm literally building a little shower, area, thing, right by the warpgate plaza. You can get in and out in fifteen minutes. You don't need to jump in the river." Petra swore that she would be a good friend to the Magical Girl of Love, and unlike every other magical girl, Love makes it easy. From the moment they made contact, Petra resonated with Love's admirable skills in saying that she wanted Sarracenia dead without flinching, and she's also adorable, and holy shit it's a breath of fresh air to have a magical girl who isn't the most emotionally draining person in the sector. All that, on top of Love's familiar troubles with homelessness and particularly accessible showers, means Petra is anxiously excited to meet her, and actually put aside a little girl time for them to hang out, with no goal besides getting to know her and taking care of her a bit. And that does mean no goal. Petra feels guilty about it, but she's quietly hoping that Meika's issues don't come up for once, and that she can selfishly spend a second day this week being fond of the younger magical girls rather than grimly supportive. This is a normal thing to feel-- emotional burnout-- but Petra, of course, interprets it as a sign of her ontological evil and antipathy bubbling up against unacceptable targets again. Petra instructs Love to 'Shower before coming. You'll feel better. My secretary's there to wash your clothes when you do,' because there's some part of her that's already moved beyond 'making friends' and into 'pampering'. The place that Petra actually invites Love to is a mall! Trending slightly more towards the grungy end of malls rather than the ritzy type, the mall she directs her to is comfortably busy, with enough of a burble and flow of conversation and activity to feel practically buoyant when drifting through it. It is also American, of course. Skewed towards a relatively teenage population, by the aforementioned grunginess, the pair fit right in-- even Meika would, if she slouched to one of the many graffitied concrete hidey-holes frequented by other maladapted teens with weird hair and nicotine addictions. Love gets looks, but not unbearably many; teenagers are much more prone to assuming that people who wear odd clothes with confidence have a reason for it, anyways. Girls walk in twos and threes, laughing louder than appropriate, people stream in and out of the arcade whose sound balancing is just a little too loud so that it breaks the nearby ambiance, black and white tile patterns the food court and neon accents splash color throughout the space. Petra is waiting on the edge of a large fountain in one of the central areas of the mall, overlooking the crowd. She's not technically supposed to be up there, but if any of the mall cops look her way, that'll be a problem she deals with when it happens. Wearing a beanie and flannel, denim shorts exposing the tapestry of scars on her legs, Petra at first looks right at home among the mallgoers, but the more Love watches her, the more that the distance created by propping up her knee on the fountain marble seems intentional. When she spots Love, Petra hops off and scurries over to her, clearly excited. She puffs up a bit and puts one hand on her hip, gesturing to the expanse of somewhat retro commercialism with the other. "Alright! Love! We're going clothes shopping. Maybe we'll get some lunch if you want after, too."
Angela	Connecting to others through the power of wanting Sarracenia dead! This may be the path to world peace but, of course, the Magical Girl of Love only really wants to kill Sarracenia because she seems senselessly cruel to her and also hurt known teammate and pal CHEVALIER VERMILLION by just ruining a day for her (Love doesn't think about how between the various day ruiners, Sarracenia may have done the least damage--but that's because Sarracenia ruined the day intentionally in a way Love could understand!). Love has no goal either beyond getting to know Petra. She knows Petra and Angela get along because she's noticed that Angela tends to pop onto the radio when Petra's on the radio and seems to act certain ways that aren't quite what she remembers of the AI. And as far as Abnormalities go, Love probably pays the most attention specifically to Angela. Love ... has also felt like a burden to Meika as of late and is increasingly feeling uneasy about the gifts Meika has been giving her. The hairband might not have been so bad if she hadn't been shoved as part of that. But she's going through tough times, she knows... But handing off that mp3 player... Now she's not just worried. She's scared. So Petra Time ... maybe that will help clear her head. And maybe it'll be less scary with company that also cares about what happens to Chevalier Vermilion. Love cannot cleanse herself with celestial light. Before becoming 'human', occassionally Agents would perform Works that involved cleaning but they certainly didn't let her go to a shower. Speaking of, there's probably a whole series of shower misadventures that take place because Love also hasn't showered before in actuality she just has backstory showering in her mind, but since she's a girl now instead of an anime it's mostly just embarrassing rather than comical and she doesn't want to dwell on that either. She actually brought her usual outfit with her to try and get that cleaned too but she isn't wearing that now. What she is wearing is a pair of jeans and a white shirt with a set of red outlined earts across it. A not-quite-right red hairtie is wrapped around her arm. It looks to still be in excellent condition and there's no fraying. It's handmedowns but Love is increasingly uneasy about wearing her 'usual' outfit when she's not doing magical girl work even though her actual magical girl form is considerably more serpentine. Some part of her thinks about how she could just slip into the crowd and keep walking and never return anywhere ever again (the level of look she's getting today is considerably lesser). She wants that, but mostly doesn't want that. The people she loves are here--she just hasn't found the world she loves (she is still wearing the heart hairclip and the shoes and the large pink ribbon so it's still a pretty eyecatching outfit.) She sees the scars but that's normal so she doesn't think too much about it. Instead, she waves to Petra with a big smile, recognizing her. "Hi Petra! It's me, Love! It's wonderful to meet you! Wow, lunch too? You're spoiling me, Petra...! Oh I like your beanie, it's so cute."
Petra Soroka	"Oh! You've got normal clothes too!" Petra looks Love up and down approvingly-- really, a t-shirt and jeans is plenty good of a wardrobe sometimes, in Petra's opinion, but some girls are meant to aspire to more than that, and Love is definitely one of them. "And with the matching heart theme too. That's good. It's clean." Petra nods, eyes closed. It's important to have thematic resonance, and Love's theme is really obvious. Petra doesn't recognize the red ribbon, though, and not just because she's temporarily cleared her mind of Meika's spiral. An object with emotional tie-ins to an outfit only exists as the object when assembled in the outfit-- once it's removed from the outfit, it becomes a different, but related object. Upon approaching Petra, though, another potential reason for the space around her becomes clear. Even without any psychic activity, her presence is surrounded by a web of buzzing needles, pricking into subdermal nerves in a way subtle enough that the civilians don't recognize it as magic, but painful enough that they subconsciously avoid her anyways. That automatic distance given to her, along with the subtly off-kilter way her gaze slips past and through people until landing on Love, triggers an instinctual sorting of her into the schema for serial killers rather than merely a delinquient teen. She's happy, though! Petra leads Love through the crowd, ambling her way to the floor map to scan through it. "And it's not spoiling. Or maybe it's just normal spoiling, I don't know. I used to be kind of homeless for a long time, too, so I just-- know, sort of. What it's like, a bit. Okay, how about just a, normal Forever 21?" Petra herself is... surprisingly not too experienced at clothes shopping. She's done it plenty before, of course, and even as a group activity years ago, but she's pretty clearly not innately savvy with it. Love might not be able to tell the difference, but Petra's wardrobe is a psychotic mishmash of milsurplus thrifted garbage, and some of the most expensive clothes available in the entire multiverse, and the latter wasn't purchased by her. So while she's comfortable with dragging Love behind her into the store, she doesn't seem to have a goal she's particularly efficient about completing. Browsing through womens tops, Petra turns to Love with a critical eye to assess her figure against the ruffly pink crop top she's holding up. She's picked out a random mishmash of cute tees, particularly beelining towards ones with hearts-- she understands the theme-- and promising that skirts and dresses are next, despite her own aversion to them. "So, like, if you've got at least a set of normal clothes... why not get out of the, uh, secret base more? Like, get out into the city and do stuff? Are you just sort of inexperienced with it all?"
Angela	Chevalier Love says, "Oh! Um. I mean. I don't ... really have 'normal' clothes because...these are actually Meika's. She gave me some handmedowns and I forgot about them because I hadn't been going out much a-and, they're not really mine so...")] She rubs absently at that totally meaningless cord around her wrist. Love is basically a serial killer if you think about it. Well, actually maybe serial killer is too gentle a term since she's actually a mass murderer. It's said that the difficulty of mass murdering isn't the murder but the pace you have to keep--but she's still a pretty recent retiree from the career. Love blinks twice and says, "Forever 21..." She dwells on this for a moment. She isn't 21 years old, but she supposes she could be forever 21 years old. Except not really because she's still kind of got that teenage build. And personality (still significantly shaped by anime's perception of what that would be). Love's understanding of clothes shopping is walking arounud and gushing at outfits that are too expensive to buy and then maybe there's a hidden demon who is trying to absorb everyone's soul energy through their clothes. She looks through dresses. While she doesn't immediately pull anything out, it's pretty clear Love knows her style. Her colors are pink and magenta (like her uniform), she loves heart patterns, she prefers short sleeves and likes ruffles---yeah, she has her theme--Petra understanding this will only help--just like her preference towards skirts and dresses than jeans. Courage was the sporty one. ''Why not get out of the, uh, secret base more?'' "I guess ... Yeah! Inexperienced is a good way to put it! Kagoshima is really pretty but I guess ... I don't really have a lot of reason to leave that's not Temptation-centered?"
Petra Soroka	Petra is vindicated by Love's affirmations of her tastes. It makes her feel clever, like she's getting good at reading people and intuiting traits about them in the seemingly effortless way that Lilian does, with the added benefit of making her look like a cool mentor to the girl she's decided to take under her wing. She's operating on level zero difficulty, though: Love is wearing a heart shaped hairclip and literally radiates cartoon hearts when talking. "Mhm, yeah, it's pretty important to have stuff that feels like 'yours', or you'll always be kind of uncomfortable using it. I get it." Petra says absently while picking through the rack of dresses. Pulling one out and murmuring, 'It's almost summer, maybe this would be good? Oh, but it's kind of kiddy-looking... how old are you actually?' while holding it up to Love to compare the shades of pink. "Don't have a reason, hm... you know, Love, you're kind of just getting started on your life. However old you are, you sort of... you've got a lot more freedom to figure out who you are than you did before." Petra collects up the stack of (far too many) clothes and dumps them into the shopping cart, briefly looking at it and considering that she's never picked out so many pink clothes in her life. "There doesn't really need to be a reason for you to go out and do stuff besides figuring out what you like and don't like." "You're, uh... how would Lilian put it. You can't make your whole life about just fighting the Temptations and doing Elite-- or, magical girl-- stuff. You've kind of got it hard, since you're starting from scratch when you're already grown up, but... like, that happens." Wheeling all of it to the outside of the dressing room, Petra shoots the bored-looking employee waiting outside a look to silently ask if it's empty, but he looks away and takes a few steps down the aisle to give the pair privacy. Petra mutters something about needing to use concealer. "So what kind of stuff is there that you'd be interested in doing? Like, when I was your... when I was... when I was younger, I tried a ton of hobbies, and most of them didn't stick. Some of them did, at least for a while, though." Petra gestures Love towards the changing room. "I'll be waiting out here."
Angela	Chevalier Love has two sides to her but one side is very well advertised. The other side, well, Petra knows all about that too--odds are that Love is happy to wear clothing that is more akin to the opposing element too but ... odds are that she's also probably a little bashful about wearing that stuff. She is sincere both with love and hate! But sometimes she's not sure what to say and one of those times is when Petra asks how old she is. As she's become human, her memory is both less and more reliable--but her time within the facility has become a little vaguer, a little tougher for her to recall. If one were to maybe restyle her hair and she put on a labcoat instead she'd probably look not unlike Angela--would Angela's memory of that time fade too if she could forget events normally? This is absolutely a question that isn't on Love's mind here. "I'm..." She hadn't thought of this before either. "...I don't know how old I am. I don't feel like I just was born the day I became human, since I remember a lot of things before that. But I also don't really feel that all that time counted. And does time I recognize as part of my 'story' count as real? Those events didn't ''really'' happen, they just happened in someone's narrative. I didn't exist until after the whole story was summoned forth as an Abnormality." Love looks between the two shades of pink and then points towards the darker one. She thinks darker pinks work for her better in a slight way. "...That's true, though. It's hard to know if ... If um... Like those Magical Girl Lessons I do, are they ''me'' or am I just copying what I was before? I don't really know, but I still enjoy doing them. And being a magical girl is still important to me." She looks a little guilty after saying it--knowing that Meika can no longer transform. Meika never seems to want people to know what's going on with her though so she's not sure how to broach that topic (she isn't aware that Petra is trying to avoid it). ''There doesn't really need to be a reason for you to go out and do stuff'' Love raises her head up and then nods a little numbly. When Petra says she can't just make her wole life about fighting Temptations, she doesn't nod though. "...Fighting bad guys is my reason for living." Love says. "If I don't fight, I start feeling lonely, I start hating myself, I start thinking... 'What is even the point of me if there's nothing to fight?'. I don't ... I don't think I should only fight but..that's still my primary reason to exist." She overhears something. "Concealer?" She looks Petra over as if trying to find what she'd need to conceal and then gives up. "Oh--I go inside... Yes, there was a time we did something like this--" She steps inside, but pauses at the entrance to look back to Petra. "I really had fun ice skating. And I'd probably like the zoo too. But maybe I'm just getting that stuff from Chevalier Vermilion? Oh--um--be right back!" She ducks in. It'll be a bit as she's trying each item individually and then setting aside stuff that doesn't fit or she doesn't actually like on her and then sorting outfits that she does like into a pile too along with Meika's clothes before stepping out again. The base of the shirt she's wearing is actually black but it has a pink heart in the center composed of various pink snakes curling around, ultimately forming that heart-shape and is wearing a darker pink pair of shorts as well as her usual heeled shoes. "How's this? I like snakes." Then she giggles. "Sneks!"