Scene #9346: Petra Goes To The Theatre

Owner	Pose
Audrey Basque	It's a Thursday night, and one Maria de la Luz has no outstanding responsibilities tonight. Or perhaps, she's simply shirking them, as those who excel at delegating their work do. The Teatro Della Mente is a fancy uptown theater and opera house, typically reserved for either the very rich or the very connected; its performances are infrequent, and it boasts effects and ambience by and for Enlightened, primarily, though nothing stops well-off humans from enjoying a night there all the same. It's one of the many places that Maria's family services, and so she always has not just VIP tickets, but a personal balcony with a perfect view of the show. Tonight, exceptionally, she's alone! She'd asked a few folks (Audrey included, surely for no ulterior motives whatsoever) if they wanted to come, but even Sylvie had turned her down. Not one to miss out on a good time for lack of company, here Maria was regardless. Though she is five minutes late to the play, as if making a statement that this wasn't worth arriving on time to the owners. The play appears to be a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, framed as a love story set during the late days of the Onslaught, a forbidden romance between a human of average blood and an Enlightened heiress, but the framing is a lot less generous on the truth of their love, and seems more about the impacts of their love on their families. Maria herself is a 22 year old young woman, with bright red hair and faultless medium skin, just a bit dark enough you'd think twice about calling her white. She speaks flawless English, but there's just a tiny bit of a Spanish accent, diluted over years of mingling mostly outside her cultural circles. Her hair is long, reaching down to almost past her hips, while she herself isn't particularly tall, clocking in at a whole five foot two even on a good day with heels. The rules of the establishment require its clientele wears masks; it isn't strictly a social maneuver (but it also very much is), but rather one rooted in more artistic Traditions, calling back to the early days of theatre performances. The power held in this not only enhances the effects of the play, but also forms a sort of contract that involves the audience in the performance as actors, and enriches the air just a bit. As Maria settles on her balcony, she adjusts the traditional Greek half-mask on her face; only her red lips are visible, and her startling green eyes. The mask is mostly black, with emphasis painted in emerald greens. It goes well with her clothes; a long, flowing black dress, frilled with greens and golds, gloves up to her elbows and high heels, even the hints of a corset. The theatre is packed, but quite dark; though the view from her balcony makes it easy to see the audience as well as the stage, the reverse could not be said, and those on balconies are afforded very deliberate, and probably magically enforced, privacy. Security is decent, but certainly not hired with Elites in mind, let alone someone like Petra. Though the place caters to Enlightened, the staff and guards are pointedly not (with for exception a rare few, higher up the chain), and this remains a theatre, not a bank. It's presumed, already, that you simply don't make it to the place if you're not its audience.
Petra Soroka	Of everything here, the detail that Petra fixates on is the requirement for everyone in the audience to wear masks. She gets it, sure, both in terms of the atmosphere and the art, from which the magic naturally develops, but there's something indecent about it. Petra's never actually been to a masquerade ball, but she can easily envision the air of sort of salacious mystery through anonymity that it provides, which obviously facilitates a sense of guiltlessly blending into the faceless, seething crowd. But that's, like, dance. Having a masked audience is perverse in ways Petra can hardly even articulate, and it makes her sweat a little bit with its implications. Fucking psychotic rich people shit. While putting on her own outfit, Petra wonders if she should bring this up in the next open discussion class for her theatre study course, leaving out the crime, of course. Petra's own obsession with the masks leads her to put as much effort into her look as she ever has. High waisted black velvet pants are form fitting down to her ankles where they sharply flare out to cover all but the tips of her sharp-toed and heeled boots with each step. A binder and gold-buttoned waistcoat flatten down her chest, where a lace-ruffled white dress shirt and black ribbon choker completes the 'slutty Victorian noble' look. Over that is a mantle that drapes off of just one shoulder, embroidered with dark floral patterns flowing down the length to where one ruffled sleeve cuff pokes out, with gloved hands. The masc slant of the outfit is thrown in disarray by the fact that Petra saw fit to do her hair for once, just barely long enough now that the loose glossy waves still reach just below her jaw. The upper half of her face is concealed, as the theatre requires, by a burgundy and black mask that sweeps over her nose and cuts in line with her cheekbones with sharp angles, with a spread of raven feathers coming off of one temple. As little risk as she feels from Maria or the security themselves, there's still a need for Petra to be anxious about this particular mission. While this might be an Urban Center rather than the Hidden Continent, Petra isn't naive enough to hide behind the defense that she's obeying the letter of Lilian's commands rather than the spirit. She's still actively sabotaging Nova Heliosanctus, in a way undeniably like Lilian did, but with a level of naked violence that's meant to cause problems rather than solve them. So while Petra wouldn't ordinarily mind the notoriety of her name eventually getting out about this, she needs to take at least some care, in order to show Lilian that she's not being a thoughtless terrorist at least. Still, she can't bother herself to expend any energy on the simple fact of getting inside. Dressed as she is, and a little hedonistically empowered by wearing the mask, Petra naturally adopts a mental posture that lands squarely between Ash and Lilian with the tickettakers at the doors. Of course she's supposed to be here, there doesn't exist a rule in the entire world that could justify turning her away, and her confident stroll into the theatre only slows by a hitch for her to turn her face fractionally towards the the staff asking her for a ticket and briefly twist her lips in contempt. She does actually have a ticket (the Concord is really cool), but it isn't even part of the aesthetic performance for her to think she's above presenting it. The subject of the play, frankly, couldn't be any funnier to Petra. As a human of average blood, with several forbidden romances with Enlightened heiresses, with disastrous effects on the families involved, she almost regrets that she probably won't get the chance to watch it. Though, she considers-- why shouldn't she watch it? She traveled all this way, and Maria honestly isn't worth wasting an entire evening of hers on her own, even with Audrey as collateral.
Petra Soroka	Petra traces her hand along the darkly stained bannister while walking up the spiral stairs to the VIP balconies. The aesthetic, she reflects to herself, is really an inevitable consequence of Audrey's recent praise for Petra's serial killer tendencies, and Petra's insistence that Audrey hadn't even seen her quality work yet. Maybe in normal situations, going quite this far would be a little overboard even for Petra, to dress up and act so thoroughly just to terrorize an approximately innocent girl, but Audrey clearly still doesn't understand what she's gotten into. The classic move would be to ensure that Audrey wakes up in her parents' house one day with the severed head of Maria on the pillow beside her, but even Petra has limits. A singular guard at the door between herself and Maria is an obstacle only in the sense that Petra has to stop walking forwards for a moment. Before coming around the corner for the bodyguard to actually see her, Petra releases an amount of morphmetal from her bottle, joining the small river on the ground drop by drop. The trail of Silver snakes around the corner to creep up behind the bodyguard, and then with a sudden surging motion it floods up and around him. Strands of metal snap around his ankles, wrists, jaw, and eyes, hard and unyielding like iron bars with the fluidity of rope or cloth, and by the time he can hear Petra's thumping footsteps towards him, he's already bound and 'blindfolded' on the ground. With a touch of Petra's finger, the metal lifts the guard up as if he was as light as a doll, telekinetically rotating him upright again, where he lingers for a moment while Petra looks around for a suitable closet to store him in. Once she finds one, she opens the door by hand and the morphmetal bindings carry him in, briefly squeezing tighter to remind him wordlessly that she's in a position to explode his head like a watermelon if she tried. Just before closing the door, Petra hesitates and then stuffs a couple thousand credit bills into his pockets, because she figures that he's going to be fired after this. Then Maria hears the soft rasping of the well-oiled door to her balcony opening, and gently closing. Thick-heeled footsteps make their way towards her from the shadows, until the masked blonde stranger invites herself to settle into the other chair with the small table for beverages between them. She leans an elbow on the table, cheek in her palm, while looking towards the stage rather than Maria. "I think it's really interesting how much longevity Romeo and Juliet has had as a story. It's incredibly cynical to all of its subjects, making fun of both the wealthy families and the idea of a romance as a whole, but here it is, being shown as a love story to a whole crowd of Enlightened. But everyone knows that already, right? It's practically passé to point out how ironic the story is. No one's impressed if you mention how insubstantial the love between them actually is; they'll just complain that you're demeaning the story somehow by saying it." "The play is a symbol, and that symbol means 'love', regardless of the actual text in it," the stranger concludes. "It's kind of a celebration of insubstantiality like that. Degraded and rebuilt so many times, the content of the story is less important than the expected cultural reaction to it; it's a performance that involves the audience, and denies any attempt to individually interpret it. I think I really appreciate the choice with the masks, now." Finally, she tilts her head towards Maria. "Lady de la Luz. How's your evening? I hope it's a good time for me to pay you a visit."
Audrey Basque	If the guard had a mind to do anything but be silently detained by Petra, they don't. The threat is understood, and the bribe accepted in a way that visibly reduces not just their wriggling but seemingly their stress. A killer wouldn't slip money into your pocket, typically, and so this works as a bonus. Really, the play isn't bad, but it's obnoxious, in that way a tale meant for the common folk being rewritten by the wealthy to be about and for the wealthy would be. It is more a warning about love, than a message about it, how the noblest feelings and intensions can throw everything else into disarray. It's well written, well executed, but the underlying message betrays the author and target audience. Perhaps the most interesting part is one Petra will broadly miss out on; there are colors in the air, sounds on the tapestry of the stage, like paintings coming to life. Reactions from the crowd to certain beats are unified, as feelings are thrust through the art and into their skulls. You do not merely see a story here; you are in it, you experience it, an expertly crafted experience relying on Traditions as old as text and stories are. When the Romeo proclaims his love, you feel as though it is love for you; when the Juliet's anguish at how she feels is sang, you feel it as yours. A form of mind-control, maybe leaning more towards being a forced empathy, the source of which is a mix of the sounds and the painted props and backgrounds being used. Visuals, dancing in the air, at least won't escape her notice; illusions and phantoms that depict words told but not shown, or that shift the hue of the stage instead of lights. And even once, the dim, ambiguous representation of an Antegent, like an absence of anything, invokes a fear from the crowd that feels too real to be the simple oohs and aahs of a captive audience. Maria is not exempt, though perhaps her reactions seem a bit stiffled compared to the crowd's, by virtue of exposure to this on the near-daily. The sound of the door behind her closing isn't surprising; it might be service, or the usual nagging voice of an attendant asking if everything is to her taste. But with Petra monologuing, and sitting, her head has to turn in a mix of interest but also annoyance. "Hm hm~. Not bad. A fan, I take it?" Her eyes size Petra up, perhaps more than she should; it's obviously more than a stare, and looking at her like one looks at a cut of meat that's priced perhaps a bit too high, looking for either a reason to pay less or one to justify the purchase. Not hostile, exactly, but judgmental to an expected degree. "Though I must strongly disagree. The original is a testament to the incompatibility in values between classes, and outlines how exceptional and abnormal it is when lines are crossed, making such a case that perhaps the lines exist for a reason. Lest tragedy follow." She leans back into her chair, crossing her legs, elbows resting on the chair's arms and hands clasping together. She reached for something, in that moment, like a slip of paper or a card, and it's hidden in her hands now. "I can certainly think of both worse and better times to pay me a visit. But my my, you're not a regular, are you? Or with the staff. Though you've dressed yourself the part, I wonder if it's for the play, or perhaps for me?" She smiles, underneath the mask, both suggestively but also transparently manipulatively. "So to what do I owe the pleasure of a stranger seated by me? Business, pleasure, or both?"
Petra Soroka	Blissfully unaware of the emotional orchestration of the magic behind the play, Petra's proximity passively dulls the effect of the magic on Maria too. The dim restless itch of the air that surrounds Petra feels like a translucent curtain being drawn around their conversation, letting the play continue on unhindered below the balcony, but feeling more distant, muted, the metaphorical camera drawn in from Maria's perspective being 'with the crowd' to simply being the two of them in the box. Emotional clarity, in a sense, that can only be focused on the mysterious arrival herself. "A fan, I take it?" "Of Shakespeare? Maybe. People keep accusing me of being a fan of theater as a whole, though, and far be it from me to act like I'm better than learning from one of the most important writers in the literary canon. I've got a complicated relationship with tradition, but writing is a language within a language, for communicating with culture itself." Petra can't help smiling a little bit at the banter and at Maria's shameless analysis of the value of her new uninvited conversation partner. Again her thoughts turn to the mask, which hugs her eyes tightly enough that the microexpressions around her golden irises can't be seen to give context to the curling of her lips. She's notoriously bad at the game of high society, with the small talk and power plays, but while this isn't the first time ever she's found herself enjoying it, every other time involved a costume of some sort too. She's forced to admit to being a fan of theatre, and to being a little fond of Audrey for her willingness to go along with Petra's goofy little costuming ideas. "The original is a testament to the incompatibility in values between classes," An eyebrow raises up over the crest of the mask across her forehead. "'Two houses both alike in dignity', right? The gradual reduction of the Montagues from a wealthy house that was just more... restrained and moral in the original, to the idea that Romeo is a scrappy, good-hearted, lower class underdog, is a totally made up invention of the modern age. It's misogynist at its core. In the original, Juliet is a helpless, childish possession of her rich family, and Romeo is a playboy pervert with no sense of decency who's romanticized just by being wealthy enough to pull it off. The lines between them were arbitrary, and Shakespeare hated both of them. I'd go so far as to say that that's the entire thesis of the play." After that faintly disbelieving line of thought, Petra relaxes back and eases off her tone with a smile, eyes locked on Maria's. "Not that I don't think your answer's interesting too. You're very proud of yourself, aren't you, Lady de la Luz?" Petra raises up the hand covered by her mantle and flexes her fingers, feeling the satin of the glove stretch. "I wouldn't be here tonight if not for seeing you, but I guess I'm interested in the play too. I'm a strong believer in the idea that the way you present yourself is fundamentally critical to communicating some relationship with society; something that this place seems to share too. That's the statement with the masks, right? To engage with society fully, you give up some of yourself to cohere properly with it. No one has radically free autonomy, whatever they believe. We're wearing the mask for the theater, but we're wearing these outfits to make ourselves part of it too, aren't we? On our own, would we think to dress like this? In absence of every bit of culture impressed on us, would we dress ourselves any way at all? The fruit that Eve ate only gave us knowledge of shame, not fashion."
Petra Soroka	"Anyways. I'm rambling." Petra looks up from her glove to lock eyes with Maria again. "Let me get to the point, so I'm not imposing too much on your precious time." Petra pinches the corner of her mask, in preparation to pull it off. "I guess it was a tiny bit of a lie to say that you were my main reason for coming here. I wouldn't know you exist at all except through a mutual friend of ours, actually, so you could consider it her fault. Apparently, she's been talking to both of us about each other, so I thought it'd be polite to introduce myself." She twists her wrist, and off comes the mask, revealing the same girl Maria saw on television days earlier. This time, Petra isn't soaked with pool water, sweating from exertion and stage lights, flushed from shouting at Audrey or the cameras, or seemingly angry or bothered in any way. She tilts her head, blonde waves bouncing slightly, and smiles at Maria. "Relax, Maria. I'm not gonna hurt you. You know, you might've been calling me a terrorist-- and is that really the best you can do?-- but I've actually heard a lot about you. Top student in the school behind Audrey, and from what I hear, much better at navigating every part of life at your school than she is. She's a bit of a letdown, isn't she?"
Audrey Basque	Though Maria could certainly not tell the nature of Petra's little clarity field, the dulled emotions from the play register, insofar as it ever registers that they have less and less effect on her. A perk of the Tradition, or a curse if you want to talk about the loss of entertainment value; her parents seem completely unaffected, by now, and she's planning to enjoy the highs while they last, before age and power make that harder. "Literature and art do share a lot of in common in that regard, quite true. What makes an image well composed tends to disregard the medium, just as what makes a story good disregards the language. Though, it seems you favor writing much more than I do," Maria notes, idly, toying with whatever she has in her hand as though it were a vital lifeline. "Alike in dignity? Hardly. The Montagues are too humble, to the point of offense. They seek glory but will not wear its mantle. They appeal to the commoners, standing in for those who idealize being born with nothing and clawing their way to the top. It falls to the Capulets to drive the very story forward, to initiate every feud and clash. Dull, really, though it shows a balance of power the author needed no words to communicate." She huffs, in a way that expresses contempt for the situation, though seems cheerful again when she laughs about Petra's assessment of her. "Proud? My, but of what? My standing? My parents? My school? My talents? I could go on, but you understand. Of course I'm proud. Why I should think the inability to feel pride at one's own accomplishments is a much worse sin. No one likes forced humility, and everyone can smell it." The way Petra presents herself surely says as much about her as Maria's own presentation does. She wonders about the fruit, and Eve, for a moment, but dismisses it quickly. "Society is what we make of it, and we dress ourselves accordingly. Here, we are part of a story. Outside, we are part of a system. I don't think about what we would do if fashion had not been invented, any more than I don't think about what we would do if we had never discovered fire, or cooking, or writing, because it doesn't matter. What ifs and but thens don't change the world, and I see nothing about it worth changing besides." She watches with increased attention when Petra reaches for her mask and mentions a mutual friend; then wide-eyed, with some amount of horror, when she recognizes Petra. She knows better than to raise her voice, and even better than to insult or threaten Petra. Though her hands tense, around whatever she's holding. Her eyes dart to them, like she's wondering if she should or not. "I see. My, I hope our little Stargazer has only said nice things, then. Though you have me at a disadvantage; she's never spoken of you. At least... not recently. Not since Lady Rook's graduation." She considers her options very carefully. Where one might have presumed them friends, the way Petra treated Audrey live for all to see indicated otherwise now. "Terrorist? It's apropos, though, is it not? Here you are, where you don't belong again. I could muster worse, but you'll excuse treating this as if my life were on the line I'm sure." She's calm, in a way that's entirely forced. This might well be the first time in her life she feels genuinely threatened, after all, and it's by someone she knows capable of terrible things. "Now I wonder why you of all people took interest in her. Oh, Audrey's a nice girl," she says, dropping the nicknames for now. "But she's so, so desperate to fit in. I question if she even has a spine, or if she's some sort of mollusk sometimes. It's really quite alarming such raw potential at birth went to someone so very..." She looks at Petra, searching for the right word. "Unremarkable. Bland. Sub-par." Mirroring Petra's words, deliberately.
Audrey Basque	"Surely you did not come all this way, to me no less, to talk about her. All eyes were on her for her magical ranking, and then she failed to capitalize on it. All eyes were on her for being in the Concord, and then she failed to capitalize on that too. What else is there to say? Let her be a footnote. All everyone will remember is the sea of rumors regarding her escapades, the sightings out of her room, and now marks and scars she's oddly proud of. She should be the one inflicting them, if she had any self-respect, not the other way around."
Petra Soroka	"Alike in dignity? Hardly." Petra's smile widens further, actually looking excited, approving of Maria's retort as part of a literary debate. "Well, and that's right: because Shakespeare was notoriously a playwright for the lower class, right? The Montagues are, despite being compared to the Capulets in the opening lines, as if their feud is something that both houses were equally at fault for arbitrarily starting, the sympathetic family out of the two. They're the ones who are 'respectable', that the audience is meant to feel most sorry for, when the Capulets' pettiness ends up causing the whole disaster. But there's twice as many Capulet characters that gets named, aren't there?" "What ifs and but thens don't change the world, and I see nothing about it worth changing besides." "What ifs don't change the world..." Petra muses, echoing the thought. For a moment, she seems to be addressing someone besides Maria, voicing thoughts completely irrelevant to the conversation they're having. "I guess that's true, isn't it? The influence the world has on your soul isn't really worth pointing out if you can't create anything new yourself. The way the world sculpted you is the only 'you' that could ever exist in that case. Rotted by the circumstances of your birth. She really should be more ashamed of herself." "Though you have me at a disadvantage; she's never spoken of you." Petra's eyes stay level on Maria while hers dart around, patiently waiting while Maria carefully feels out the scope of the threat in their conversation. The smile slowly slips off of Petra's face; now that the mask is gone, it's just a little harder to keep up the attitude necessary for it, and it feels a lot like 'getting down to business' now. "Well, I'm one of the most active Partners in the sector. You could've always looked me up, if you were curious enough about whatever work your bestie was up to." Petra's tone remains completely unchanged through 'bestie', obviously disbelieving the title despite them nominally being friends. "Like it or not, you're kind of a nobody compared to me." "And I belong anywhere I want." Petra waves her hand dismissively. "I'm not a criminal in every Urban Center, you know. I'm a paying customer. And I'm honestly invested in seeing how the play goes." Petra stands up and starts restlessly pacing around the pair of chairs, with slow, languid steps. "It is an interesting debate, right? Using the text to defend the Capulets, even when the text itself is so scornful of them. It's hardly even a question of 'death of the author' at this point, because actually, the deconstruction of the story into a symbolically passed down narrative is a great example of the pre-authorial works talked about as an example of alternative forms of storytelling. The story evolves through passage through iterative generations, and from the Ship of Theseus-ed pieces, there's no authorial intent that you can consider more important than the cultural reception at the time." "I have a feeling I know what your opinion is. That there's something inherently right about the rituals and whatever that the upper class have, and that they're inherently correct to perform, no matter how many children die for them. There are dominant forces in society, and occasionally someone born into them will be socially stillborn, and it's tragic, but it's too valuable to be changed. I know why an Enlightened, especially, would feel like that."
Petra Soroka	"But I've got a different opinion." Petra stops pacing and leans against Maria's chair, folding her arms across the back. "I think the Capulets are good for the same reason that there's so many more of them in the play than the Montagues. The violence they enact on Juliet is the reason why Juliet exists at all, and why she makes choices to make a story happen. For there to be Juliets, there has to be a mass of evil, animalistic freaks around her, and each arbitary rule, each cruel or controlling word, each little act of abuse, chips away a little more at her, until she stops being one of them. The distance someone escapes is equivalent to the amount of violence everyone around them does to them." "Now I wonder why you of all people took interest in her." Petra sighs. "God. Aren't I wondering that all the time too. Desperate to fit in, but she's never understood anything about what it takes to be one of you besides studying. She can't even manage to trim herself down in a way that makes her function among you people, because there's just nothing there at all. Once she graduates, she'll just be totally forgettable, won't she?" "I guess, if anything, you could say the reason is 'fate'." Petra thinks out loud, reflecting back on that first limousine ride together. "She was in the right place at the right time. I like to think of myself as a miracle worker when I put myself towards doing something, and I was fresh off a miracle." Petra stretches up on her tiptoes to lean her head over the back of the chair, bringing it down besides Maria's head. "I don't really like her at all, if I'm being honest. But you're more fun to talk to than I expected, li'l local Capulet. So if I told you that I'm planning on ruining her life, what would you say to me?" She looks down, following Maria's fidgeting to her lap. "And could you show me what's in your hands? I've set up a field to block any electronic signals leaving the balcony, and if you try any magic to get me in trouble, you'd be decapitated before you could even get a word out. Don't do anything sudden, and you'll get out of this fine."
Audrey Basque	The literary debate, though it's hardly Maria's field of knowledge, is one she can carry one on the sheer weight of having opinions. Eyes never leaving Petra, now that the mask is off, and now that she feels fundamentally unsafe. "Equally at fault, or so the author claims, but then presents wholly one-sided affair. It really is as if he wanted the audience to pick a side, after so boldly claiming both parties at fault. But really, the Montagues reached further than they should. You could frame the Capulets' acts as evil, spurring Juliet on, but the Montagues were out of their depth, and Juliet was frail." The comparison doesn't go over her head. She's almost proud to catch it, even. "Like poor little Stargazer, yes. A woman born in a house of wealth and prestige, with every tool, every resource, to be the best that could ever be asked of her. And she's wasting it on... what exactly? She's not even involved in her family's affairs. At her age? With her experience and gifts? She is exasperating. If you want to call her failures "violence against her" then you may as well say it is society's fault she turned out the way she did. That is such a deflection. No, our little Juliet isn't being abused or chipped away. She simply isn't the right person for the position she was born in. A terrible trick of circumstances, but one entirely her fault. Who we are is up to us. Who she is is up to her." Maria's smiles fades, realizing this is very much business now too. She rolls her eyes at the accusation she didn't look her up; that's clearly not what she said. "I said she didn't speak of you, not that I couldn't look you up. Perhaps she's ashamed of knowing you. Really, she's made quite a point to avoid speaking about Concord matters to us. An occasional line, now and again, but even when her marks were injuries it was as though she might die if she told us anything about them. A dog bit her, once, and she would not even tell us what kind." Maria scoffs, dismissing the notion of meaningless sacrifices immediately. Rather, the subject goes back to Audrey, and Maria seems increasingly annoyed to be spending so much time speaking about that. Until Petra's intents are on the table, and she blinks twice, startled. "Ruining her life? She's doing that herself well enough. Like you say, she'll be forgotten. She doesn't have what it takes to harden into a proper family head. Certainly not a Basque. So I say do as you will. It's of no concern to me. Make little Juliet drink the poison and spare the Capulets further affront to their name." Petra drops her head down, and Maria stares up, now more nervous than even the fake facade can cover. She looks at her hands, realizing that she if she refuses she may well die, and if she shows Petra... no, it doesn't matter, because if she shows her, she's home free. "Very well. But you asked to see it." She opens her hands, showing what looks like a business card. It's painted, intricately, with shades of black and yellow, in patterns meant to overwhelm the mind almost instantly. The card buzzes with magic, hypnotic, forceful, and cruel. What it would do, to an ordinary person, is cause despair and fear so deep they would be paralyzed on the spot, and be unable to do anything but crawl into a ball on the ground and weep at their irrelevance. All Petra would see, is the optical trick of the patterns, which are still disorienting and confusing, but can't do anything to her. "Really, if you'd been smart, you would've asked me to keep my hands closed. Do you think you're the first person to approach me menacingly?" As if presuming the outcome certain, she's already reaching for her phone, to ascertain the signal block.
Petra Soroka	"No, our little Juliet isn't being abused or chipped away." "Mhm, exactly. To her detriment, clearly." It's kind of funny to talk so plainly about Petra's plans for Audrey, when she hasn't even laid them out this clearly for Angela, much less anyone else. She feels a little bit like a monologueing supervillain, which she technically is, but given her plans with Maria, it's probably totally free to do so. Cementing the idea in her mind that this is all Audrey's fault is helpful for what comes next, and given how pathetic their friendship actually was, Petra won't feel bad about breaking it up forever. "She's practically just wasted space right now. If she was more successful at being one of you, then there'd be no point in me getting involved, and if she was already catastrophically melting down, there'd be nothing for me to do. She's just lukewarm nothing. The violence against her isn't society; it's me." "A dog bit her, once, and she would not even tell us what kind." Petra rolls her eyes, both at Maria, and at imagining Audrey saying that. "Oh, I bet you cared so much about what kind of dog bit her. You know, typically, if someone was proudly showing off their scars, you'd assume that they're also inflicting them back, right? Combat's not the job of every Partner, but it should be pretty obvious that Audrey was getting into it just from the way she looked coming back to school every day. So I can only imagine that you said that bit about self-respect for freak pervert reasons instead, creep." "Make little Juliet drink the poison and spare the Capulets further affront to their name." Petra taps her finger against her cheek, still leaning across the chair and over Maria's shoulder to chat as if they're best friends in a pleasant literary debate. "That's the thing, right? Juliet keels over dead, the two houses make up, and now everything's back to normal. The poor, tragic Capulets learned from their misdeeds, and after politely dabbing at their eyes, they can go on with their reputations intact and nothing changed. Every bit of cruelty in the world got routed into that one girl, and everyone else was spared because of it." "It'd be so convenient for you, right? Finally top of the class, as you're meant to be. A thousand times more deserving than Audrey, besides the annoying little detail of her being more talented than you at one little thing. Not a Lilian, not an Audrey; a perfect, unchallenging heiress, who slots into place without needing a single change. The world as it should be, on the back of the sacrifice of one stupid girl. You should be begging me to help you, actually." "Very well. But you asked to see it." Petra stares down at the card, falling briefly silent as she's enthralled by the pattern. She stays quiet just long enough for Maria to get the impression that 'quiet contemplation' is Petra's reaction to overwhelming terror, but when she reaches for her phone, a droplet of metal darts out of the darkness and stops just before puncturing through her hand, quivering in the air like an arrow. A pulse of electromagnetic energy shuts her phone off entirely. "Cute trick. Mind if I check it out?" Heedless of personal space, Petra reaches down and plucks the card out of Maria's hands. She twirls it around between her fingers, admiring the fluidic colors of the magic painting purely as a source of art, rather than spellwork. "Poor Tybalt. You really don't think Audrey didn't take the chance to tell me what you can do, do you?" Audrey explained some, of course, in idle conversation. Not that it matters to Petra's resistance, but it's better to make Maria think it's Audrey's fault. "Actually, that magic's the whole reason I bothered talking to a smug little drone like you at all, though your terrible fucking takes about Shakespeare were fun for a bit."
Petra Soroka	"Blade Crimson. You've got a lot of control over your Tradition, don't you? Mind telling me how specific the suggestions can get? You're not really in a position to refuse, but I figure a fucking idiot like you responds better to me asking politely, or else you'll freak out and do something stupid." Maria's willingness or otherwise to cooperate doesn't matter much anymore, and Petra gets to work before even finishing her sentence. The distant sensation of being cut off from the stage and crowd suddenly amplifies, making the balcony dizzyingly isolated in a sea of sweat, meat, and drooling contempt. Stripped down into dissociative nothing, the play becomes the act of animals and patterns of vibrating air through flesh, the opulent air of the VIP balcony withering away in the impression of wood and dust and nausea. Like a hole punctured into the thin film of reality that maintains a human's ability to interact with it cohesively; the Shakespearean performance on stage slides from Romeo and Juliet to Macbeth, 'a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing'. Unintentionally, Petra's psychic power to rip away the crust around the bare nervous sensitivity to emotion leads to some magical bleed from the card in her hands. A faint wisp of terror and despair leaks out to fill the void, in addition to Petra's process of mimicking Maria's magic. "Kudos on being prepared. But in the end, you're even less relevant than someone like Audrey is."
Audrey Basque	It's be hard for all of the conversation lines to continue when Petra is so thoroughly shocking and disarming. She's not wrong, though, about how Maria sees it all; Audrey IS a waste of space, Maria truly did not care what kind of dog bit Audrey and just wanted to be nosy and also weird, and Maria definitely, absolutely believes that if Audrey is out of the picture, everything improves. She really should be begging Petra to help, if she wasn't being threatened. But she is being threatened. The dart makes her yelp, and she's distressed at the sight of her phone no longer working. If it wasn't before - if Petra had no reason to believe Audrey regarding Maria's demeanor - it's on display now. The reality of the situation makes her voice crack in places, her eyes look about nervously as though there were something to spot, anywhere, that might help her. "A-Ah... of course she would have tattled. But I'm not a combatant! I'm not like you or her, there's no point hurting me!" Pride slips into desperation really easily, these days. She stares nervously, as Petra asks her about her magic. She hesitates, only for the time it takes to imagine that dart of silver piercing her hand. "Y-Yes, I'm very proficient in. The suggestions can get very intricate, as long as you... as long as you know the person, what they're like. What you can ask them to do that won't confuse them. What we paint, still has to be interpreted by the receiver's mind. That's easy with emotions, a bit more work when it's specific commands." But why does this blonde disaster even want to know about that? What good is it going to do her? She talks about being the violence done to Audrey, and now she's calling her Tybalt; was she speaking to Audrey's Romeo after all, or merely a Mercutio? But if the latter, then the story's been quite bent out of shape. The only respite Maria gets, is that she's still sitting. The sensation is alien and terrifying, in a way someone like Maria simply can't process. Not that Audrey fared much better, when it was her; but where Audrey rose if a tiny bit stronger from that, Maria is crushed like an empty soda can, nothing in a sea of nothing that stands for nothing. She even gets a taste of the card, multiplying the sensation of being less than nothing into a certainty. She brings her legs up onto the chair, tightly curling up into fetal position insofar as the large chair even allows this; it doesn't, quite, it's a bit crunched up and sprawled out, but the terror on her face, the tears rolling down from her eyes, probably tell Petra everything she wants to know. Being told she's even more irrelevant than Audrey is the unnecessary finishing blow that makes her wail, like there was anything left to gain at all.
Petra Soroka	"I'm not like you or her, there's no point hurting me!" Petra sighs, resting an elbow on the table while twirling the painted card around. "See, that's not quite right, though. There's always a point in hurting someone like you. Not being a combatant just means you don't have a say about whether I do it." "But you're just not someone who's even worth hurting. I can't feel good about myself for bullying a schoolgirl, even if she's a fucking evil mage heiress who's probably matched me for doing evil shit when I'm a literal supervillain. I know for someone like you, there isn't any amount that you could be hurt that would make you interesting to me. You're just rotten to the core. You..." Numb to both the effects of her own power, and the emotional influence of the painting, Maria's sudden crying takes Petra by surprise. The gradual decline from slutty opera villain that started when she removed her mask accelerates when she's faced with a crying girl barely any older than herself, with the acute twinge that she knows it's her fault. Petra hurries around to the front of the chair and squats down, yanking a bottle of water from the bar into her hand with a tendril of metal, and offering it out to Maria. "Hey, you know, I'm serious. I'm not going to hurt you. I mean, I'd be justified if I did, since you're a rotten piece of shit loser with a complete absent hollow of a soul, and you also organized people to beat me up at Lilian's graduation, and didn't even let me listen to her speech peace, but. You know. I've got standards. I wouldn't just hurt you for no reason, and the only reason to hurt you would be to kill you. So you're gonna be alright." "Just, uh..." Petra shuffles around to the table, pulling out one of her contact cards. She stares at it for a moment, and then flips it over to the blank side. "Just follow my instructions, and give me your magic supplies, and you'll be safe. You want to be safe, right? That's a good... fucking, mental interpretation, for you to be receptive to the magic, isn't it?" Once she's given the materials to work, Petra's first small painting is made up of cool blues and light purple, abstractly oceanic in a retro postmodernist way. Imbued with the magic impression of relief and distraction, the suggestion buried in it is to 'forget Petra was ever here once she puts her mask back on, as if the meeting never happened'. Next, "Alright-- give me your phone." On the back of Maria's phone case, in a subtle but unavoidable position, Petra paints a much more elaborate scene. Stars in an auroric sky, invoking white giddiness tied closely together with red aggravation and revenge. Indigo loathing paints the backdrop of the night sky, broadly dispersed to influence every other emotion, with light singular green brushes of addictive, cathartic thrill wisping throughout. In totality: the next day Maria goes to school, she will be compelled to declare every dirty secret of her peers in Nova Heliosanctus that she's aware of. The delight of gossip and the excitement of power in revealing secrets will lead her to spill every detail of infidelity, bullying, criminal behavior, collusion between businesses or staff, and sordid personal history, including Audrey's own. The arrangement of the white stars, in a loose crown shape, guarantee that no matter how Maria tries to justify this behavior, it'll lead to it being Audrey's fault somehow.
Petra Soroka	Once that's done, Petra hands Maria back her phone and straightens up. Her lips twist into a frown, as she watches the tearstained girl cope with her circumstances, and realizes what her most effective course of action is going to be. With a sigh, she cleans up the work station, and then picks up her mask between two fingers again. "... You won't mind if I stay to watch the rest of the play, right? Or-- that's a rhetorical question. You won't mind." Once Petra has the mask back on, and Maria reverts to considering her as a mysterious stranger that wandered into her private balcony, Petra awkwardly settles into her chair again to finish the play. It's actually really important that she performed the mimicked magic well enough for Maria to be able to stay not realizing who Petra is for at least that long, or else she won't be able to trust that tomorrow will go as planned, but she doesn't enjoy the rest of the play quite as much as she'd hoped she would.