Scene #9285: Jellybean Jeeps

Owner	Pose
Xion	Camping out had been something Xion hadn't gotten the full appreciation for, because relative distance wasn't as much of a thing for her. Travelling outdoors was something she had done a good deal of, but actually staying out was a sometimes food. Dozing outdoors, falling asleep under a tree, activities with temporary friends that gazed up to see starlit skies and gathered by the embers of fire. A substitute hero's life. An 'adventurer', the way people had drawn it up but never meant. Wasn't it what everyone wanted? Was it what she wanted? Xion was bad at being her own hero. She didn't know if she wanted anyone to be it at all, because if someone else was a hero to her then it meant something awful had happened. Friends - close friends - were rarer than heroes. Xion really only counted one or two outside of the Organization, herself, and those linkages had become strained. Still, people considered her a friend. Confessed it, '''left''' holding onto it, and left her holding embers and ashes but not the hand she wished would have stayed instead. 'Instead'. A pain to think that, a cool knife in the gut. And who, instead? In the fight, she didn't have the weapon to swing. The Kingdom Key, scattered by an eradicating blast of Pale damage, stung and tingled at the edge of the Nobody's perception like an overworked muscle or a phantom limb both and at other times was coldly silent and unresponsive, hadn't been enough. Her 'best' had only dragged the corpses of their resistance over a finish line that left their living remains shambling in the lurch of . . . Whatever 'this' was. Whatever 'that' wasn't. There was no help into technology. 'What do I do?' wasn't answered by a search bar or a sassy burger girl intelligence that haunted her phone. And to ask... Who? And to say... What? And to be... Uselessness was misery and Xion had reached the limit of what distance and rest could accomplish. 'Rest' never really made her want to fight harder either, it just frustrated her, downtime that should be skipped when possible. She had to... do things, to do things. And so camping became hunting things. Odd jobs, light work. Wandering through places that seemed so ignorant, so much better off, so much easier for their simple problems. Did she long for it? Did she want a life like that? Some place she was comfortably just big enough for to settle and try turning moments into memories? The buzz of the Multiverse carried on. Fights and inanities. The points of surprise, where the 'spoils' of her victory spoke to her, despite having fought past the death of her simple self in that Light-filled pit as one of the light-less. She hadn't expected anything, in a strange way, or expected worse. It'd even be forgotten, she knew. Eventually. It was almost impossible not to run away from your problems with an ever-expanding universe to explore. Untethered, she wandered through a metropolis of domed buildings and stick-and-ball towers strung with glass-filled archways. Dark blue and tan, grass in drifts and sparse trees, a warm wind of dry air off the nearby desert from the afternoon sun, the atmosphere was resiliently pleasant in early spring. Despite a scattering of craters being repaired in one district, people happily spoke of their prospects - such as the annual sky-darkening when Capsule Corp ran a huge festival summiting with the sky darkening at midday and fireworks going off. Interested, Xion's investigation among the martial communities revealed that it was Bulma - the CEO of the Capsule Corporation - running a big distracting fete so she could pass off summoning the Eternal Dragon yearly for a petty wish that made sure the Dragon Balls couldn't be used for 'some ignorant nonsense like a warlord's glowing hairjob', per sources. It seemed so simple. Wishes - miracles! - was what they had been short on, but, she could borrow some from this place for sure.
Xion	Petra receives an addition to a groupchat that had already been going on for a while between Qetra and Xion where Xion mostly posted mirror selfies in various locations with captions on what she was doing. Qetra, of course, was herself. Without seeming to have realized she hit the 'add friend to DM' instead of just 'switch DMs' button, she just starts chatting in that window. > Hey Petra > I might have a lead on something cool. > Can you meet me in West City? Xion sends a MultiMaps direction link! > The warpgate's in the city center, we can grab road food. True to promise and premise, despite any awkwardness of 'several months of selfies in backscroll' Petra can arrive in West City at a large pill-shaped gate in a well-gardened square that has both a pedestrian and several vehicle lanes and is naturally high enough to accommodate fliers and flying vehicles as well. If she doesn't just teleport through it, Customs is absolutely effortless with her Concord ID, though she's asked by the officials if she's 'planning an event that crisis services should be ready for' in the same tone of breath as being asked if she let anyone other than her handle her luggage at an airport. Past that, Xion is at a fancy hot dog stand getting extra onions and barbeque sauce on her luxurious brat. Parked nearby is the most candycore pastel Jeep-esque buggy with oversized offroading wheels and doorless frame that has ever existed in this world (except that one time the Candy gimmick villain showed up to devastate local populace and infrastructure into confections).
Petra Soroka	The reality of Petra storing her things in her mirror is that she is storing them with Qetra, a fact that usually doesn't matter due to Qetra's overall disinterest in expressing autonomy. Her phone is the one thing that demonstrates otherwise, with Qetra occasionally getting the selfhood bug and starting to spam texts at people she likes. After a few too many instances of this happening with Hibiki Tachibana, Petra just made an alternate account on her own phone for Qetra to use, so that no one got confused by a 'u up?' text from Petra except when they got that exact same text from Petra. So usually, Qetra was her typical 'okay ! yay <3' self with Xion, but the events at Lobotomy Corporation have been as bad for her as anyone, despite her not making a single appearance during them. A couple weeks ago, she poured out paragraphs-- separated, of course, into a hundred individually sent messages that never comprised even a single full sentence each-- of clumsily worded, childishly repetitive whining, about Lilian, and Petra, and Rita. She's incapable of elaborating on any of her feelings and it's obviously part of a tantrum that she's throwing in every direction available to her until she inevitably shuts down talking at all, going right back to her usual a couple days later with no in-between. So that, more than the selfies, is what Petra has to awkwardly ignore. > something cool? > i'm not really doing much else > so i can be over soon Petra's purchase of an extradimensional guitar case the previous day was done on impulse, for the aesthetic, but she soon realizes a problem. According to a quick internet search, trying to store it inside of her reflection will make a black hole or something! And lacking a home to leave it in, Petra is just sort of forced to carry around a guitar case slung on her back, since she didn't visit the Library after the expo yesterday either. This is in addition to a loose t-shirt over a compression top and harem pants, along with a demeanor tired enough to look ill, making Petra look like the most stereotypical lesbian guitarist to ever walk the face of the superplanet. It's still vaguely surprising to not be forced to argue her own case when traveling anywhere, now that she's a Partner. She's prepared to, to open up the guitar case and miraculously demonstrate that there's a guitar inside and not a tommy gun or something, but she doesn't have to. Instead, she's just presented with a surprisingly difficult question. "I'm not planning anything," She eventually settles on. "But I can't recommend not being ready. Just statistically." Petra waves, lackluster, with a thumb latched between her shoulder and the guitar case strap. She's got a post-Customs cigarette between her lips, but she tosses it aside and habitually slices it in half with a cord of Silver, as a matter of politeness. "Yo. Sorry for not..." She started apologizing instinctively, as a greeting, but she can't think of any specific thing to apologize for that wouldn't immediately ruin the tone of them meeting. 'Sorry for not being in a better mood?' She just lets the QTE fail and moves on. "Where're we headed?" Her general tendency towards not eating much when alone means that she's also immediately drawn to the hot dog stand alongside Xion, hesitating before ordering two entire fancy hot dogs.
Xion	Xion had asked Qetra to be a 'good girl', and rewarded her with a kiss after teasing out a whole night of talking. On that night, she had asked, 'where's the mark for me?' and meant it even though she didn't fully understand what she meant by it. It, as all things involving hearts, were difficult. Was being needy and selfish being her own hero? She hadn't known and so kept things going, posting and laughing and talking about nothing and sharing the reflections in things she found as a kind of picture-log of looks and travels. The welling of feelings - paragraphs of it - are intermixed with Xion's best efforts at receiving and talking through. 'What did it feel like?' she'd ask, and send a pensive selfie in a hood-down raincoat with damp hair looking into a streetlamp-bright puddle. 'It's awful, I know, and it's hard on you' she posted when feelings couldn't be explained, understanding in a personal way the lack of linking sensation and ephemerality to word, and had tried to steer Qetra to a safer emotional harbor. She hadn't known one herself, but there was something useful to be doing, talking some of it out with Qetra. Rita. . . was difficult, for Xion, and Lilian was agony, but healing meant effort. Laying in a ditch wouldn't bring anyone back, or move anyone forward. > I hope so. Was all Xion had replied, but 'forlorn' had been her setting for a while. Passing through into West City in harem pants and a compression top with a large object case had her profiled as a ki-blaster immediately. Her 'best to be on the safe side' answer gets a curt nod from the customs agent, their pen lifting to note down while vocalizing: 'Just. . . visiting.' Then, returning effects: 'Welcome to West City.' Xion is dressed with a checkered black and white baseball cap, grey graphic tee depicting some sort of pink humanoid-ish mascot with thick limbs and black fingernails on its mitt-hands and big white parachute pants on dabbing, black shorts with a belt jangling with Starlight's empty star and Pylon's glass-clasped crimson Keychain charms off her front left, and a dark blue handkerchief looped around the back right of her belt. Standing at the hotdog stand, she flicks up her hat in greeting with a loose pointer finger and then fingergunning at Petra when she starts with 'Sorry for not...' "Yo. Let's load up, we're going into the out-side, all day." She introduces, and packages up her deluxe BBQ and onion dog to go with a big (beet sugar? Some widow's peak spike hair asshole was on the bottle marketing it as the superior WARRIOR's brand) soda. A quick climb into the sweet-smelling jeep sees Xion setting up the center armrest of the jellybean jeep up by knocking off the cushion and revealing a kind of storage trough for their dogs. Cupholders conveniently to either side sort out any road drinks. "You're gonna navigate." Xion begins, climbing into the levers and candy panels driver's seat and contemplating a rolling gumball to mess with the 'electronics'. A talking squirrel (NOT THAT ONE) duo branded user interface and entertainment system screen comes on, revealing what to Petra is the most busted-ass phone game status screen for a car she's ever seen, with all the buttons set low (ostensibly for NOT THAT ONE squirrel sized hands) with big buttons and swipe-scrolling windows. It's a mess. There's a whole screen dedicated just to visualizer for the aux jack's audio in, though, so, it might be the best car she's ever been. It's not clear what Xion wants her to do before the Nobody tosses a dessert plate sized thick piece of hardened technology with a grid interface and a large clicker button on the top for on/off. When on, a very simplified relative topography map is displayed, as well as the location of seven lights. Several are already located 'right there', glowing on the tracker and ostensibly in the trunk of the jellybean jeep.
Xion	"They used to have vaults of the things, but after the reality quakes, they stopped, apparently. Keeping all that power in one place, hoarding the wealth of miracles. We could go into one of the disaster zones of the old Vaults, but why? The wish is right here. Have you... thought what to wish for?" Xion asks, in a decent mood without repressment from her choice of travelling partner. "I'm sorry, too." She asides, as she pulls out of the parking lot, cranking levers and manipulating contraption shifters and a flight yoke to guide her cartoon wheeled vehicle out into the city's roads and towards the outskirts. "I... Could have been there, for you." She sighs, intent on the road for her words. "More." She clarifies after a second. "I should have been there for more of them. Instead I just... confronted my limits. I thought it'd 'get better', by the end, because empty hope was what I had, and then you ran into the center of it and went 'me this time', and--" For a little bit, she just drives. Merging out into the outbound road, she finally finds her breath again. "Sorry." She repeats. "I didn't drag you out here to dump about my feelings. It really is about the wish."
Petra Soroka	Petra isn't in-tune enough with the martial artist's spirit to get the vibe of this world on contact, but their assumption about her outfit isn't entirely off base-- it's the same clothes she wore to Hiromi's challenge a month ago, bought specifically for their suitability to that. Maybe there's still some Archwolf particles left on it. Not that Petra's really drowning in wardrobe options lately. It's only after being handed her chili dogs that Petra realizes she needs to tie her hair up to neatly eat them, with how long it's gotten, but Petra's long since triumphed over the perils of only having two hands. While clambering into the passenger-side jeep seat at Xion's indication, her floating globule of Silver wraps around the foiled-up hot dogs to hold them while she's busy tying up a short ponytail. Tragically, and much to her dismay, a small glop of chili gets smeared on the morphmetal, and Petra frowns as she tries to scrub it away with one of many paper napkins. "Blech. And I'm still out of hand sanitizer, too." It seems like it'd be an easy problem to fix, but she's been complaining about it since a few days into the war. "You're gonna navigate." "That's good, 'cause I can't drive anything without legs." Petra catches the map projector disc on her elbow while carefully chomping down on her food, and slides it down into her lap to tap the button with her elbow too. "So was there a quest about this all, or...?" "Have you... thought what to wish for?" "...Oh. Those kinds of wishes. I remember hearing about those before," Meaning the Union's vaults, and the sort of unbelievable hoarding of power. There was a war fought about them, after all, that directly-indirectly led to Petra's place in the war a few months ago. It's been on her mind more than usual, lately. Wishes, though... "I guess it should probably be easy for me to know what to wish for. It is easy. But, I just... w-wait, like, for real, just a totally limitless wish?" The concept hits Petra belatedly, and she shoots up in her seat, whipping her face back around to look aside at Xion while the jellybean car rolls out. She's thought a lot about wishes, but rarely ever the genie-sort of them, rather than the selfish kind you generate on your own. So, the vague smokecloud of the topic of Cinder coalesces suddenly, catching Petra's breath and smotheringly all-encomapssing for a moment. "I... I c-can't really, say..." Petra takes a mid-sentence breath. "Whether you should've been there, more. I feel like I already overdrafted so much from everyone. Including, especially, you. And, you know, for that bit at the end, that's what a lot of people do about unpayable debts, so...." Petra dryly laughs about one of her more convoluted suicide jokes, funnier for the way that it's dependent on several metaphors that live inside of her head to be funny at all. She takes another bite of her hot dog, and finds that her throat is too tight to swallow, and has to fumble around for her water to be able to speak again. "Sorry, also. I've been doing too much feeling-dumping recently. The wish, you really think...?" Rather than being elated at the idea, Petra is tensely hesitant, at the unfinished sentence of 'Cinder'.
Xion	The Dragon Radar, as it is known locally, is a large rugged dish that has the solidity of military ceramic and has the weighty feel of solid construction. It's not that clear on where things are, but it's certainly easy to navigate on. . . more or less. Combined with poking around the infotainment screen in the jellybean jeep to pull up the locational data, Petra can correlate the Radar's pointing and the surrounds on a pixellated world map style zoom out. Featuring the jeep (as a jellybean with wheels) crossing terrain mapped to the roads and sparse surrounds, their trip is uneventful heading into the desert. There's a signal that seems to be up in the hills or mountains, one that's fallen down into a valley or river or lower topography down a ways, and one off in the farther distance. The closest, up some hills, reveals scrub tuft in the distance, an offramp, and a whole lot of open terrain to rumble along. Plenty of time to talk! Xion settles in with one hand and a steadying knee holding the wheel with cruise control on and unwraps her BBQ dog to take a bite with the side of her mouth. She has to set it down blind, but does so with general ease - accounting for the bumps and rattles of rocks and terrain under big wheels. It's a steadied drive, not a steady one! The chili incident doesn't go completely uncommented on, Xion producing a napkin to pass over while Petra's mid grumbling about it. The war had been an awkward time to ask about... anything at all, really, but now, it caught her attention that... "It can get dirty? I've never seen it come out dirty." 'That's good, 'cause I can't drive anything without legs.' Rumbling along on a sugary drive, Xion thumbs the wheel and watches the road. "You know, Petra," Xion begins again, and smiles faintly, scoffing and side eyeing her navigator. "Does that mean driving me crazy's normal for you? Or do you need to flip levers and switches for that?" Followed by a sigh and looking back on the road. "The Dragon Balls are parts of a ritual. Set of seven. I went ahead and stole four since they had already been collected - I showed up to the concentration and some weird pig guy was wearing a handkerchief and begging for his life as soon as I teleported in, which got me started on the whole situation, but it's not really a. . . quest? We pile up these bowling balls and summon a big wish guy. It's short, as far as quests go." 'But, I just... w-wait, like, for real, just a totally limitless wish?' "I don't know. I hope so. I know that..." It's hard, but just talking because they're there, together, doing something, makes it easier. That was the point, of course, but... that didn't make it effortless, with the belligerent and useless organ known as the 'heart' in command of dealing relief and miseries both. "... it's usually wasted or used badly. And, I," She laughs, a sick hiccup. "Can't think of any other way to use it? What, like, give me a new powerup? It seems sick to say. And that was what we fought that whole war over, even." "Shuffling around light and hope in a shell game to make the most people happy 'right now' feels like losing every round. But what do you do, when you can't think of a joy for you?" Xion falls to muttering, and goes for a second bite of dog before it gets too cold and food-mass-y.
Xion	Chewing methodically and swallowing with the aid of a long and fizzy draw of syrupy cola, Xion starts bringing the jeep down an incline and desert shifts to scrub brush and the signs of an oasis, a bus stop and bench in the shade of trees near a long and irregularly shaped body of water. The Dragon Radar says there's one of the wish orbs somewhere there to ponder! Parking is an operation of several levers and cranks. Xion's contemplations, pausing to look across at Petra, leave her slouching back for a moment. "Angela needed a lot of help. And I promised. If you'd rather have not been responsible for afterwards, I guess, you could have died. But I would have felt worse - it would have meant we definitely failed." And when she says 'we', she means 'I'. "I think that I owe it to her to try. She tried for me, and I didn't ask her to. I've... been fighting, long enough, that I know I'm 'lucky to be alive'. Now I just owe someone I can't-- quite, repay."
Petra Soroka	"It can get dirty? I've never seen it come out dirty." In a stunning reversal from how it was a long time ago, this is one of the topics Petra is most emotionally uplifted by talking about right now. Petra is a little bit drowned in Objects right now, with the guitar case across her lap, the Silver FullBottle held between her knees, the Dragon Radar to her side, and the chili dog in her hand, but that mild amount of stress means that finishing her second hot dog will feel like an Achievement, so she dedicates her attention to it for the next few minutes. "Mhm, I mean... it's like, 'stainless', but it doesn't kill germs or anything. Well, as far as I know. It-- it might, actually. Now that I say it out loud, I'd kind of be surprised if it didn't kill germs on contact, but I've always, like, washed and disinfected it, because it'd feel really weird to not." Petra stares at the morphmetal for a few seconds, and then directs it to hang out the side of the moving jeep and wooble itself around until the last chili bean fragment stuck to it falls off into the desert. "I guess blood comes right off of it, but dirt sticks better. I just deal with blood a lot." "Does that mean driving me crazy's normal for you? Or do you need to flip levers and switches for that?" Taking it in the spirit of the joke as it's meant, Petra snickers lightly and lays her elbow on the side of the door. "Well, I like the levers and switches, for your information. But unfortunately, it kinda seems to come naturally. Maybe I'd have better luck not fucking up the lives of paraplegic Elites if I found some." "It's short, as far as quests go." "I... guess it does sound pretty... short." Petra settles uneasily, on the idea of quick, easy wish quests to bring Cinder back to life. She watches the scenery move by, silently, unsteadily contemplative, until she suddenly blurts out, "Hey, mind if I put on music?" After fiddling with if she actually has a compatible aux cable, between her phone and a jellybean car, it turns out she totally does. She puts on Evanescence, immediately, turned low enough to have a conversation over top of, but filling the gaps with o/` 'Screaming, deceiving, and bleeding for you' o/`. Then, with that solved, Petra returns to the thought she left incomplete. "It's... pretty convenient that a... 'easy' way to get a wish exists, somewhere. I used to be pretty pissy about that sort of thing, and it does feel... but it doesn't really matter how it feels, does it? It can't matter enough to mean anything, that it feels, narratively incomplete or whatever, compared to actually... bringing Cinder back. But it's sort of fucked that I have the thought at all. But it's-- I-- I feel like it should've been obvious that something like this would exist, or-- something at all, but I haven't been... shouldn't I have been looking for something like this?" "I--" Petra tenses, gripping the side of the door, struggling with each word as they come out. "I, obviously-- I owe her too. I owe her a-- more than anyone else. And I... just haven't done anything about it, like I've, 'given up'. Which is...." Petra fails to finish the thought, and sighs it out with a raspy heaviness sick with guilt. It's not the first time this thought has come up in her mind, though, not even only since Sougo suggested a way to bring Cinder back too. She's spent the past month... what, laying around in the woods? Playing video games? She's a fucking Concord Partner, she should be... relentless, so if she isn't, the only conclusion is that she doesn't care.
Petra Soroka	"If you'd rather have not been responsible for afterwards, I guess, you could have died." Petra sighs, increasingly guilty-feeling. "Yeah. Unfortunately, I didn't. Not that I would've rather. It'd be a real fucking bitch move to complain about being alive, but... well, without me, at least, everyone could've agreed on 'never again'." She switches topics without warning, though the connection from the last one is obvious to her. "Have you-- has Lilian talked to you at all? Since?" Then, "... Oh, over this hill here, it says. To the right. ... This really is barely gonna be a day trip, huh."
Xion	Trusting Petra to Objects and Contraptions as much as she trusts herself with an internal caloric engine, Xion is still interested into the greeble-goop that Petra had been favoring for a while. There's not a second glorping of chili! Despite driving around in a jellybean jeep, Petra's dedicated attention causes the consumption of one whole chili-dog without straining the cleanliness of her alien psychic metamaterial. "I don't normally see many of the suit types who have the material just, out, like that. It's different, for you, than most of the others. Sougo and Woz and the others get wrapped up, but their 'Chrono Defender II's and-" A faint chuckle. "All the other parts of their suits, they don't just stick around like yours, where... 'Sting Silver' is just your other-name. And it's you, doing things. That's..." Xion's faint smile of appreciation remains for a short while, speaking while Petra eats and not worried about being replied to. "... kind of cool, actually." Then she scoffs, listening to herself, and pulling her WARRIOR brand beet cola from the arm for a draw. "Totally unbiased, by the way." She adds, to give away the game. They were just jokes. For a while, at least, they had a purpose - they were doing something to shift any amount of the weight. 'Hey, mind if I put on music?' Xion's tired-eyed grin is sly, as she reaches around to get the aux cord out and pass it over. "This is the good console because it has the visualizer on the dash for the music. Of course you can play something. Even if it's distracting and makes it not legal in places that regulate infotainment screens!" She almost sounds chipper, but, the cool versions of the menus of her fake as hell bigwheel gumdrop offroader were important to her. "Chip and Dale, the guys who sold it to me, told me to not park it near any cops or city buildings 'if they knew what I meant', but, they live in Traverse Town and there aren't really any police in Traverse Town, so..." Her rambling is caught with a bob of the neck and a lingering grin. "Oh, happy music." She murmurs, at the background, but, she does like it. Marked as a GOTH GIRL by the facility's most able to label such abnormality, she had stolen Nosferatu's blood and earned her short crop of black hair and flannel shirts with distressed shorts. 'I used to be pretty pissy about that sort of thing, and it does feel... but it doesn't really matter how it feels, does it?' "Around here, it's normal to bring back all the people killed by random villain violence, since they get it a lot. Maybe it's just a revolving door afterlife, or there's a scheme going on. It felt a little shady, but it's trying something, right?" Xion echoes the sentiment, the feeling that she doesn't hear in the crown of static sitting in the passenger side. "But it feels cheap. Like if it was so easy, why isn't there two dragons for the places that need it? And then..." 'shouldn't I have been looking for something like this?' "Petra," Xion begins, and hangs on her copilot's tensing 'I--', stammering through words. "This might sound... morbid, terrible even, but I think that you were right in the first place. That it does matter how you feels, and, this," Sucks. "-is a strange violation, isn't it?" The hiccup-laugh she makes is mirthless, slowing down and gripping the wheel-two-handedly. "She died for us. And she died for something that we turned around and broke, cracked like an egg on you and fried on the ashes. Can we even want her back? Are we worthy? And if her, why not wishing all the Agents who died back? And if her, why not just wave some other world's magic stick at it because we decided 'hmm, we want this and are the multiversal Elite, who decide who matters more than whole planets', and--" The voice she takes, the sneer, the venom, sounds invocating of something truly ugly.
Xion	"I... There's... It's... I've never felt it before, but I don't know if it's giving up? It almost feels expected, like a boulder that's already at the bottom of the steep hill and I'm just leaning on it tiredly, and I know if I try to push it'll all roll back downhill again and it matters, I know it matters, and then..." "... I stop short of complaining about being the one who's alive. I reach for the Kingdom Key and I just pull that matchstick out instead and sometimes I start crying. It's... I hate it. We were just friends. I didn't want her to be my hero, I just wanted a friend who was besides me, and she goes and--" Xion chokes up for a while, and in swallowing, the drive continues. 'Have you-- has Lilian talked to you at all? Since?' "Yes." Xion croaks, through a phlegmy throat, and then she hard swallows and takes the turn Petra advises, rounding a bend of Truffula tree-like tall-tall stalks with tiny tufts at the top. She speaks again preparing to get out. "I asked her if she even wanted to talk at all, to start. And I realized... That I had been torturing myself even more than I think Lilian tried to do for edge in a fight. Something 'we' pushed her to first, the things we became capable of when we were our worst and greatest selves. I... apologized to her, and she apologized to me. I don't know where we are, as anything. When we get better, I've planned a duel, just between us, just to see for the sake of a fight between knights -- but that's just to settle it, finally, in my heart. 'Talking' that way... I didn't hate it, and, I didn't love it, but it was more incredible as a motion than many things I've ever done. It's the most clearly I've ever talked, sword to sword, and, my voice barely kept up. So, I think, we'll have to keep talking." Xion pauses, and, faintly haunted, looks confirmingly at Petra. "Is that crazy? I-- I've not really stopped fighting that war, Petra. Putting it to rest, that's something that we need to do. If this helps?" "Okay. That's what I think about it. A wish is a wish."
Petra Soroka	"It's different, for you, than most of the others." Petra nods, leaning back in her chair and waggling her finger around, letting the morphmetal spin and settle into a pristine rotating torus in the air. "Well, I guess that's probably because the metal came first, before the suit. I--" Then she gets completely distracted by 'Chrono Defender II' and shoots up in her chair, clattering the guitar case around in her immediate pressing need to whip around and face Xion with her whole torso. "Oh my god. Oh my god, did you know-- those names? You know those stupid names for all the little bits of Zi-O's armor? That's Woz. Woz is the one filling the wiki with all of those. I read it off him, for filth, and it's just been stuck in my brain forever since then." "Anyways," She settles back into her seat, readjusting the case, no longer driven by that insistent need to gossip. "I guess the suit's like, a 'compromise', between me and the Silver. Remember how I was a robot for a while after getting out of jail?" Petra hesitates, and then blinks uncertainly. Actually, she might just have never mentioned it to Xion, and done a good enough job of covering it up back then. "Ah-- well, I was, anyways. And... that wasn't really my choice, but... it's okay now, because Sting Silver's mine. And that means it's okay for me to keep this part around." "Which is good, because it's really cool." In agreement, she separates the morphmetal out into a dozen rippling droplets held in a line, and each one molds itself into a different playmobil-sized toy weapon. They squish back together into a fidget spinner a few seconds later, and Petra starts fucking around with that for a little while. "Even if it's distracting and makes it not legal in places that regulate infotainment screens!" Petra scoffs while fiddling with the cable. "Well, what are they gonna do? We'll race donuts around any cops who try and chase us." She pauses and belatedly snickers. "Pun not intended." "Around here, it's normal to bring back all the people killed by random villain violence, since they get it a lot." 'Random villain violence' sticks in Petra's brain instantly, slotting into the infinitely hungry spot in her mind for self-flagellation. The senseless triviality of it, both the violence and the villains, both of which are things Petra embodies willingly, being linked to Cinder's death, feels like it's retroactively another way she's guilty. She's capable of superimposing the mutually contradictory ideas that Petra is continually responsible for 'random death', and also that even pursuing a resurrection method meant for things like that is degrading the emotional impact of Cinder's death. "She died for us. And she died for something that we turned around and broke, cracked like an egg on you and fried on the ashes." Petra clenches her fists against her thighs, face firmly angled down. "She... not the Seed of Light. She wasn't in it for that. Of every agent in the facility... she was the only one I knew would be on Angela's side. Justin and Random... they only did it for her, and Parker, I was ready to-- I thought about getting her killed, before, because I was sure she would be against...."
Petra Soroka	"Which means she... died for exactly what we did. Just for-- deserving to live less. Because everyone agreed she was the easiest cost to spend." Petra constantly orbits sick, choked-up, tearstained unstable messiness, but here the topic stands aside from either a cathartic outpouring of feelings or a nauseous holding-in; rough, ragged edges with an impenetrable haze beyond it, that she can only fumble through blindly. "So, like, is this what 'okay' looks like? Am I supposed to be 'okay' with it? Should I be... inexhaustibly, hunting for every lead I can find, dedicating myself to... to whatever quest shows up, instead? I don't know. I don't know how to feel. Right now, I'm just doing... nothing." Petra traces a finger around one of the gumdrop dials of the dashboard, while the rock-ballad over the radio croons 'Lithium'. "... I don't know at all how to be 'someone whose girlfriend died'. That's kind of morbid too. Shouldn't I just... feel a way?" "I reach for the Kingdom Key and I just pull that matchstick out instead and sometimes I start crying." "... Yeah," murmurs Petra, whose grip has, for weeks, inevitably found the Fourth Match Flame she took from that cell when reaching for anything. "It doesn't feel like something I can put down, or... should." "Something 'we' pushed her to first, the things we became capable of when we were our worst and greatest selves." This topic drains Petra even more than the previous one did, and when the jeep rolls to a stop, Petra dully slumps into her seat for a while instead of moving to get out. Out there is something that maybe, somehow, improbably, could have a chance of improving something, and she's practically honor-bound to do it. The topic of Lilian, though, doesn't even have a greeble Petra can busy herself with hunting to feel like she's making progress at all. "She doesn't want to talk to me at all. She's... repulsed by me, and it's only gotten worse since the end of the war, and I can't blame her. Because-- it was everyone, but it was me. I set the tone. I had all the tools, all the time, and all the people under my control, and I made it that way as a choice. Anything anyone else has to apologize for, it's all traced back to me in the end, and Lilian knows that better than anyone because I was the one she trusted it to." Petra sighs, looking out at the desert trees exhaustedly. "So... yeah, it hasn't stopped. The way I cut, I don't cut clean, so it can't be stitched shut nicely in the end. I'm pretty sure Rita sent the Black Silence to kill me, and that'll continue until we're dead. Lilian... I think since I used up 'everything' to fight her, there's no place to draw the boundaries where the war ended or was won or lost or conceded, because the weapons of it are still scattered everywhere. I don't know. If it never gets better between me and her...." She swallows, hoarse, confessing. "... Then I think that'd have made it not 'worth it', to me. Isn't that fucked? Of all the places to draw th-the line-- what I was okay with sacrificing a-and what I believed in to fight f-for, and that's where I break on it. I'm k-kind of, really...." "If this helps?" "... Maybe it helps. I hope it helps. It's... motion, at least, and that's better than stillness no matter what."