Scene #9287: Get Along Shirt

Owner	Pose
Petra Soroka	"Hoooh~... So that's your trick, then." "The topic is closed," Frankly, if all Nobunaga had done was threaten to murder Petra and then pull a few triggers at her, she'd hardly bother to be irritated about it. If people aren't proclaiming their intent to murder Petra and then failing to follow through regularly, then she starts to feel like she's doing something wrong in terms of how she's presenting herself to the world. The Concord might be a significant cut above average, but Petra's demands of the people around her are both different and more stringent than those needed to be a Partner, so naturally this situation would happen. And when Petra signed the devil's contract, she knew the fine print written into it, that her responses would be bound in ways that she can't stand but would have to tolerate anyways. And it's also inevitable for those people to recognize that Petra isn't allowed to kill them in return, and be irritating about it. Logically, she expected this. But it's still really really annoying, and the greasy little warlord is insisting on getting involved in the City, which is Petra's turf, and on top of that, though Petra respects pretty much anything Zero says, he guaranateed that Petra and Nobunaga would have to be physically copresent with each other. And so, this. Having to meet with a person she doesn't like and probably won't ever like, in order to find a way to exist around each other due to a shared affiliation rather than any quality she respects about Nobunaga. Petra would like to say that it's a struggle to fit something like this into her busy schedule, which is a tiny bit true and mostly false. Petra's schedule involves a lot of either existing in the wilderness or existing in the Library, with segments dedicated to wandering through the Dorado or the City, and only intermittently doing any necessary work in any of them. It's entirely possible that Nobunaga might end up being Petra's only social interaction today, a thought that bothers her enough that she swears to herself to call Angela later. The location that Petra calls Nobunaga to is an island in the northern reaches of the Great Ocean, remote enough that it would theoretically be a great opportunity to assassinate her. The warpgate opens up by a harbor tinged with grey mist, fishing boats drifting in and out of the small town. Buildings filter away into the surrounding hills, coated with thick knee-height grass and dotted with occasional squat evergreens, where Petra is waiting outside the border of civilization on top of a large rock. She's vaguely entranced by the way her tobacco smoke merges with the heavy fog, and when Nobunaga approaches, she flicks the cigarette away and cuts it in half with a gleam of semifluid metal. "Hey. The Director's not around. If you're still planning on shooting me in the head, fucking do it."
Nobunaga	It's no party for Oda Nobunaga either. Concord leadership is about the only authority she respects above her own, and so being informed that any harm to someone who has proven so caustic would be an indictment against her status as a Partner has left the warlord in quite a position. The determination is to, somehow, make this work. At least find a way to ensure coexistence with as little friction as possible. Given the parties involved, that's going to be quite the feat. "You know," Nobunaga's figure emerges from the fog. At that distance she comes to a stop, her arms folded behind her back. In this posture, her cape closes around her body with only glimpses of the uniform beneath, "The thought had crossed my mind on the walk over. Ah, but the Director's orders were quite clear, so I cast it away as soon as it appeared." Eyes closing, she gestures with one hand, parting the cape, "So that makes me into someone who cannot follow through on my word. Hardly a good first impression." Lowering her hand, Nobunaga's eyes open again. The slight tilt of her head makes her expression look a bit more severe and serious than usual just by the curve of her hat's bill, "I intend to render my assistance to the City and its woes. You clearly have a stake in that place as well. So we should find some way to coexist peaceably, for our own benefits as well as the benefits of those we intend to assist." Lifting her gaze, the illusion cast by her hat bill's shape is gone as quickly as it was there, "Name your terms. Let's talk."
Petra Soroka	"The thought crossed your mind, and you oh so nobly chose to respect the words of someone stronger than you to cast it aside, but you did still have to say it, huh?" Petra muses while clambering up to her feet on top of her chosen rock. It doesn't really take someone as familiar with combat as Nobunaga to know why Petra chose to position herself in a way that the firelight glow of the town is just barely visible on the shoreline beyond the hill, with the local grassy forest abandoned. It's a different reason than she could've had, for directing Nobunaga along a path of low visibility away from the warpgate, though neither option was peaceful from the start. "But, Director Kuran's words were about Partners threatening to kill each other. And you did say you'd do that. But I'm not going to, and if you point your gun at me, it's up to me whether I get killed." Petra twists her lips into a scowl, standing on top of the rock with her arms crossed and no visible weapon. Rather than seeming like she went up there for some kind of tactical or intimidation benefit, it mostly just seems like she went up there to perch like a cat proud of finding a high up spot to sit on. And she's haughty like one, too. "The downside of being in the Concord together, is that neither of us has the luxury of killing each other. But the upside is that I can demand that you respect my fucking words a little bit more, when I tell you that you don't get to snidely joke about killing me and call me 'girl' like I'm some nobody you can walk all over. Because if you're going to talk violence, I'm not a child who can't give it back better than I get it." "Angela and I are the dominating Concord forces in the City, and right now, neither of us like you. So right now, my terms are..." With a single smooth motion, Petra draws out Pillar of Creation by dragging her fingers across the morphmetal that spills out of her sleeve, brandishing the black glass spear to the side while a swarm of metal daggers rises up behind her back. "Fight until you're exhausted, and then we'll talk. I'll make you treat me like a peer if I have to beat it into you." The Silver rushes forwards and Petra jumps off her rock, skating on a streak of fluid metal to double jump into a wide-grip slash downwards with the head of her spear. The recovery of her impact onto the ground is covered by the trailing storm of Silver that follows her, peppering Nobunaga like gunfire.
Nobunaga	> "The thought crossed your mind, and you oh so nobly chose to respect the words of someone stronger than you to cast it aside, but you did still have to say it, huh?" "I am approaching this with honesty," Nobunaga states, spreading her hands to either side in a way that spreads out her cape, "All of my cards are on the table, as the saying goes." She doesn't add voice to her suspicion that had she not said it, she'd be called a liar anyway. Best to just own it and move forward. Her arms lower to her sides, closing her cape up again while she listens. Respecting words-- that brings a little smile at the corner of Nobunaga's lips. She'd done that and got a snide little backbiting remark for it. Ahh-- but this whole mess is her own fault, she reasons. Her eyes close in brief thought; she hadn't exactly made the best of impressions at the very start. One thing led to another, but she herself is the one that started that snowball in the first place. > "So right now, my terms are..." As the Pillar of Creation comes out, Nobunaga flips her cape open. One hand grips the hilt of her own sword, tilting it forward to rest her hand on it. > "Fight until you're exhausted, and then we'll talk. I'll make you treat me like a peer if I have to beat it into you." "Accepted," she speaks without thinking. There's a subtle shift in her stance, but it's not a charge she faces. It's a barrage of needle-like projectiles. Her footing shifts again, more braced, and she uses her free arm to flip her cape out in a billow that conceals the precise outline of her figure. The splattering of crimson shows it didn't quite work as well as she might have hoped. As the cape settles, there's a fire in those crimson eyes. Immediately she suppresses it with a calming exhale. This isn't the time for that. Instead of... whatever she was going to do almost by instinct, Nobunaga thrusts her hands out to either side in a dramatic flare of the cape itself, "Come forth, soldiers of Oda!" Oh right, warlords have armies. They leap out from behind her almost as if they'd been piled up using her silhouette as cover; little, knee-high creatures resembling Nobunaga herself but with big round heads and rounded features and big gormless white eyes that convey No Thoughts, Heady Empty vibes. In quartets they jump out from either side in flurries of golden sparks, forming ranks and files. Only when the little familiars cease does she draw her sword, raise it, and then thrust it forward, "Fire!"
Petra Soroka	Warlords do have armies, but it's not as if those armies tend to pile out of the warlord's cloak as little chibi clones of themselves. This is actually almost the opposite of how armies tend to work-- normally, they tend to be made up of full sized human beings who have to march or sail to get to a location, and if Petra was expecting something like that from Nobunaga, she figured that she would be able to see the soldiers before getting shot. And who has soldiers, anyways? Sarracenia's armies sort of count, Angela's agents were at least hypothetically being led by a commander, though it's rare that the Sephirah actually bothered to do so. Elites tend to be psychotically isolated fighters; when thinking about who typically 'commands' others in a fight, she can only think of herself and Lilian off the top of her head. She frameskips from one foot to backpedal away from the incoming round of chibi fire, but that psychic power is much better at dodging clear, precise intent, and not a wave of bullets coming at her from a formation. "You know, it's really, really not that hard to get along with me." Petra slides her hands apart on Pillar of Creation's haft, holding it like a staff to protect her face and chest. The cloud of metal flechettes takes its place in projecting force, as her own little army of disembodied weapons. "People act like it is, but it really isn't." "I try to make it easy, even. I give you chances, I give you advice, and you whine and ignore me and complain about Lilian, and you call me girl as an insult. You know who fucking does that? Half this sector!" Matching weapon for weapon, the morphmetal droplets spread apart in a grid in front of her, and then rush in a volley of her own bullets aimed one per Nobu. Trying to clear out or occupy the army gives Petra the chance to dart in with her own spear to challenge the sword that she imagines has to be under that cloak somewhere, quickly assessing Nobunaga's height and stopping on a dime just out of reach of where she'd expect a sword sized for her to retaliate, channeling the rest of her momentum into a reaching thrust with the full length of Pillar of Creation. "And I have plans for the City. Even if you're working under Lilian, I'm not really fucking thrilled about the idea of letting another carbon copy loser Elite who treats everything she or I say as an attack set up their fucking business in the place that Angela calls home."
Nobunaga	The little troops spread out in groups of three; each group consisting of a soldier that shoots, then dips back into cover to reload while another shoots. By the time they're done reloading and the third soldier has fired, the first one is ready again. The added chaos of morphmetal shards has them scattering into cover amid squeaks of Nobu! Nobu! Those that get speared enough to die disperse into brief clouds of golden dust and light which lingers. > "You know, it's really, really not that hard to get along with me. People act like it is, but it really isn't." > "I try to make it easy, even. I give you chances, I give you advice, and you whine and ignore me and complain about Lilian, and you call me girl as an insult. . ." There's the charge she expected of a spear-fighter. Nobunaga's thumb flicks the tsuba of her sword, clicking it slightly out of the saya at ger side. Feet stop just short of her range; as expected. The spear itself thrusts forward. In a practiced motion, Nobunaga twists herself to one side. In the same movement, her katana leaves its home, pushing Pillar of Creation just that much further away from her body. "And I recognize that I made a mistake," the warlord lets out a sigh, "Part of why I agreed to be here is to set things right. I certainly have given you no reasons whatsoever to tolerate me, have I?" She twists her wrist, hooking her sword's tsuba under the Pillar's haft and using her arm to pin the spear against her side, "And for that I am sorry. We are meant to be allies, after all. I should have trusted you rather than withdraw into my own pride." In scatterings of golden sparks, fresh rifles materialize above and behind Petra in a fan formation. The first one sweeps itself around, swinging the solid wooden stock across the backs of her knees. The other three rotate in place, firing in quick succession at the backs of her legs. > "And I have plans for the City. Even if you're working under Lilian, I'm not really fucking thrilled about the idea of letting another carbon copy loser Elite who treats everything she or I say as an attack set up their fucking business in the place that Angela calls home." "I respect that," Nobunaga states, closing her eyes briefly. The blood running down her own side is tough to see against black cloth and within the volume of her cape, "Even someone like me cherishes family." Even if her brother is a useless loser who couldn't even hack it as a heroic spirit.
Petra Soroka	"And for that I am sorry. We are meant to be allies, after all. I should have trusted you rather than withdraw into my own pride." It's so rare that Petra gets an unequivocated apology on anything. It's not quite shocking enough to make her stumble in her combat flow, but a small segment of her mind is immediately devoted to wondering if this is a privilege afforded to Concord Partners specifically, and if it is, whether that's a power she wants or wants to avoid. It's too late for her to change her decision, but 'ease' in navigating the world and other people has never been what she's pursued-- so then she has to refigure where to draw the line of her demands out of other people. The natural bar to hold every other human being to is Lilian, and accepting anything that falls short of that is a compromise, so she could raise her standards to keep herself tensed on the edge of survivability, or she could accept her position as a justification to wage less war on the world. She hates that second one!! But that's probably what Lilian prefers, right?! Either way, Petra defaults to the more defensive response to Nobunaga's parry: cantering backwards and sliding into a neutral grip on Pillar of Creation, rather than gambling on flicking the spearpoint around to catch Nobunaga in the open point of her guard. The 'paff-paff' of morphmetal artillery fire raining down on Nobunaga's tiny army during their scrambling through the tall grass is a comedically grotesque diorama happening at knee-height, with little puffs of gold dust simulating trench warfare around the pair of them. "... Okay." Petra sighs, after a stretch of silence punctuated by chibi squeaks. "I appreciate that. If it's that easy, then I'm glad." The fan of guns appearing is a trick Petra's familiar with from the Library and the same trick Petra used back then lets her dodge the bullets that actually do fire this time. She flickers, and when the gunstock swipes across her knees, she's suddenly mid-jump with her knees tucked to her chest, landing with a roll away from where the volley of bullets buries into the damp dirt. Put at Nobbu height, she has to fend several of them off with a swing of the butt of her spear, jamming them in the center of the head to send them stumbling back for a morphmetal pellet to pierce through them. "It's family, and it's Lilian's project, and it's my home too. If you can respect those three things, then you're going to have absolutely no trouble with me. I'll even help, even though I'm not a part of Trideag, because I do want the City to turn out well. Okay?" Petra pitches Pillar of Creation down to plow through an orderly line of soldiers, dimly enjoying the feeling of being a fucked up kaiju terrorizing the Japanese military. The spent morphmetal from the constant barrage pools on the ground and wraps around her spear to pull it back towards her, dropping it back in her hands and coalescing into three large globules floating in orbit around her. Those globules stretch out into spears identically shaped to Pillar of Creation, albeit blank metal rather than obsidian shot through with colored veins, and then she launches all four of them towards Nobunaga.
Nobunaga	> "I appreciate that. If it's that easy, then I'm glad." "It really is," Nobunaga relinquishes Pillar of Creation when Petra pulls it back rather than fight her grip from side to side; guiding it away from her flesh with her sword in the same motion. The surprise attack doesn't go off as she was planning, instead pummeling the grassy ground with shot. Rather than disappear, though, the quartet of rifles swing around and hover around their master, "Or perhaps more accurately, it should be." She exhales once, long and slow. If she's tired, she's doing a good job of showing it as she straightens her posture. Her sword holds out, the curve of the blade turned upward and to one side, pointed down. > "It's family, and it's Lilian's project, and it's my home too. If you can respect those three things, then you're going to have absolutely no trouble with me." "That suits me just fine," the warlord admits, drawing up her free hand, "And in turn I will help you and yours. In honesty I would rather be of use to you and yours before requesting help in my own endeavors; we have similar goals, after all. Making the City a better place for those who call it home." It might be a bit of a mixed message that she's raising her hand and clenching bloodied fingers into a fist as she says this, but-- well, it's connected to continuing the fight. With the various tiny Nobbu soldiers engaged in a stalemate with morphmetal artillery, something new rises up from behind Nobunaga herself; a colossal version of the same little chibi troopers, clad in black metal with robotic arms that end in big C-shaped pincer claws. NO! Nobunaga's clenched fist comes to a stop. Giant Mecha Nobbu raises its clamp hands over its head (still hat-clad), accumulating golden light in front of its mouth. When Nobunaga thrusts her hand forward, fingers spread apart, Giant Mecha Nobbu jolts forward, unleashing a big old fashioned Laser in a sweep across the field. BU! Tiny Nobbu crouch in their makeshift fortifications, covering their heads with tiny hands as the resulting explosion blasts up earth and stone.
Petra Soroka	"And in turn I will help you and yours. In honesty I would rather be of use to you and yours before requesting help in my own endeavors." "Maybe," It's hard for Petra to not know that particular feeling well, given the impossibility of accepting any kind of help that she has. Her hesitance isn't because of that, and though she's breathing heavily between sentences, she's not being stubborn out of hostility either. "But my own angle on the City is something that isn't totally in motion yet, and it might be something that... other people find it hard to help with." "If you have help for Angela, though, then that counts just as much to me. Sooner or later, there's going to be plenty of people coming to kill her, and I won't be able to get her out of the City myself without killing a lot of them." A hand drenched in blood is actually the best way to help the City! Petra is always saying this. Her own hands have plenty of blood on them for Angela's sake! Petra pulls back her fist to dissolve the morphmetal spears after they sail past Nobunaga, melting into a whip that snaps back around her hand. The undulating metal tendril draws up warily at Nobunaga's gesture, and at the first rumbling report, it whips around Nobunaga's wrist to try to wrest it down, but that doesn't stop the Mecha Nobbu from coming out. Petra, already bloodied from the peppering of Nobbu shots, tilts her face up in exasperation at the gathering light in the giant one's mouth. "Are you kidding me? That's the way it looks? I'm not going to get in the Beauty of Ash to-- ack--" Petra's own defensive fortification is just a shell of morphmetal, frantically pulling back to cup around Petra to cast her in its shadow from the laser. Layers of Silver superheat and peel away in wet sheets, ripping into the landscape behind and to either side of Petra, as she bunkers down to try and wait it out. When the laser fades, the Silver blast dome is glowing white-hot, dimpled in patches where it sloughed away, and when the pressure lets up, the surface tension sags and breaks, revealing Petra underneath it. She coughs and wipes ash off of her face, pushing herself back up to her feet. She holds out the Silver FullBottle to one side and pops the tab open with a finger, drawing in the scattered morphmetal splattered around the charred field. "Alright. Well, that's enough for me." "... There's a fish place down in town that's supposed to be pretty good. I ordered ahead to have something ready to eat afterwards, if you wanna talk there instead." And by 'talk there' Petra does mostly just mean eat, because that's an offering of nonhostile coexistence, at least. It's a tiny little place down by the harbor, with four tables besides the one that Petra plops herself down at, serving a fish prepared kind of like a baked potato. After all the fuss of walking down into the town, where apparently no one is bothered by the laser blast that was just over the hill, Petra slides into her chair and starts poking at her food with a fork. "What's your plan in the City, anyways?"
Nobunaga	> "Are you kidding me? That's the way it looks?" "Yup!" Nobunaga's bright tone is hard to hear over the sudden burst of laser energy. Giant Mecha Nobbu braces itself behind Nobunaga, clamping its clampy hands in readiness-- and Petra says she's done. The machine familiar relaxes, flickers like a bad TV image, then fades away into golden energy. Nobunaga sweeps her sword up and slides it along the leading edge of the saya, then aligns it and sheathes the weapon in one practiced stroke. "You're really good, you know," the warlord comments, "I was also wrong to underestimate you, but you already knew that, ahaha!" She ends it with a hearty laugh that ends with a flinch and a tender grab at the side she'd pinned Pillar of Creation with. It doesn't stop her smile, though. The assorted surviving Nobbu-- there's somehow still a bunch of them-- cluster around her and disappear, prompting her to straighten her posture a bit. > "... There's a fish place down in town that's supposed to be pretty good." "I accept!" Nobunaga doesn't hesitate at all. The trip into town is only notable on her end by the fact that she's just constantly dragging around that cloud of nobbu dust. It's gone by the time the pair reach the restaurant itself, and Nobunaga is looking a fair amount less messed up. Her order, also without hesitation, is salmon. This place doesn't do sushi, so salmon steak does the trick. "In my visits it seemed to be quite a miserable place," Nobunaga says, leaning back and waiting for her order, "It reminds me of the old shogunate, during my first life; where the people were made to toil in the dirt all their lives to support the luxuries of... oh, perhaps a hundred overfed nobles? It was that way in every province before the Age of Blood." Lifting her gaze without lifting her face, Nobunaga stares under the brim of her cap, adding to her serious tone, "That broke out into a civil war that lasted a hundred years. I've heard the City is already starting to fight amongst its districts. It would be good to stop it from escalating, don't you think? That's what drew me in." "But helping Angela and yourself takes priority," Nobunaga's eyes close, her face almost insufferably smug, "If it's bloody hands you need, you would have a tough time finding bloodier."
Petra Soroka	The fact that Nobunaga appears to be consuming the powdered corpses of the little Nobbu soldiers doesn't escape Petra's notice as they walk into town, and Petra has to wonder about what the real historical existence of Oda Nobunaga was like for the people marshalled under her. There were... actual people, back then, right? Nobunaga didn't take over Japan with a horde of tiny clones and mechs, surely. But did she do this to her real soldiers too?? Did Oda Nobunaga use magic to consume her fallen soldiers? Were people okay with that? Petra considers asking. She could always jot down an interview to stash in Malkuth's floor of the Library, with a first-hand account of a warlord from centuries ago. In general, there's probably a ton of interviews with Elites that would be incredibly valuable to have in the Library, for the... many unique perspectives that her peers tend to have. She doesn't ask today, though. She isn't sure she could handle Nobunaga saying "Yes, the comical laser mech was really helpful in my conquest of Japan" right now. "In my visits it seemed to be quite a miserable place," "Well, it definitely is that." Petra drums her nails on the side of her water glass, leaving a smear of ash on the condensation. "There's little battles all over the place already, yeah. Not Wing Wars yet, but Syndicates are all piling over each other to rip apart District 12, and the big players are definitely in motion, and whatever they're planning, it's going to be a fucking disaster." "Trideag is going to be necessary in stopping the worst part of that, at least. In the non-bloody sense. But Trideag isn't going to hold up forever, I think...." Petra scatters a few droplets of morphmetal on the table, moving them around like war map tokens of armies. "In that sense, helping Lilian in Trideag right now is the best way to help Ange and I. When things really go down, it'll be Trideag that stops the Library from getting overran by whatever Rabbit Teams or Claws or K-cops try to carve out a piece. Angela's pretty limited in what she's able to do, and my role for now's gonna be gathering information to be better prepared for whatever happens. I'm okay with thinking of 'The City', as it exists now, as basically being a lost cause, which makes the organizations that everyone is making that much more important." "I... don't really know what a planetwide war would really look like. I mean, I've been an Elite for a long time, but that kind of thing is still sort of-- like, there's billions of people living there. It's an absolutely wild scale." "Hey--" Petra, in the middle of her ambling battleboarding around the fish on her plate, looks up at Nobunaga suddenly. "Do you mind if I do something real quick?"
Petra Soroka	When given affirmation for her entirely vague request, the entire world beyond the table shifts in an imperceptible way. Like a light flicked off, draining a color beyond sight, the qualia of socially projected meaning evaporates away to emulate 'face-blindness' for the world, where all the bits and pieces of wooden planks and hunks of metal, and the cloying haze of smoke and spice, the glass that looks out onto dirt and concrete and water and flesh, ceases to mesh together in a way recognizable as a seaside town. The sole exception is like a spotlight shining on the table the two of them are sat at, where Petra chews her lip with intense eyes, staring down at her Silver. The droplets merge together into teeny little chibi soldiers made out of featureless metal, with Petra's short hair and a bomber jacket that she isn't wearing right now. They each brandish little weapons that emulate the ones in Petra's arsenal, and Petra snickers and pokes at the tiny Pillar of Creation in her soldier's hand. She leans back in her chair, and the psychic effect gripping the world dissipates. "Alright. Take that as something that you've done for me, and we'll be... capable enough of working together, I think."