Scene #8247: To Make An Omelette, You Have To Overuse A Cliche

Owner	Pose
Eggman	KETCHIKAN ALASKA This is a place that carries History. Not much History, mind you - it's Alaska, after all, and rural Alaskan towns don't tend to have long and storied History so much as rumors that linger long past expiration date. But the History Ketchikan does carry is heavy indeed - and it's the Watch's History. This is the spot where a leader of the Watch gave up the fight. This is the spot where the Concord drew a line in the sand and pushed the Watch back over the line. This is the spot where the Watch learned the cost of a zealot in their midst. It's not a place you choose out of random happenstance by spinning a globe. It's also a nice spot for cruise ships, though! It is entirely possible that that more than any other reason is why Dr. Eggman has chosen this place. He's currently relaxing in a swimsuit at the back of the S.S. Ainne, sipping some non-alcoholic eggnog, a plate of french toast next to him, a pool in front of him, an umbrella with his logo above him, and a red-and-yellow-and-black beach chair under him. He's still wearing his goggles and his glasses. He has sunglasses over his usual glasses. ...huh.
Petra Soroka	Petra thinks for hours on how exactly to approach this meeting. Not in terms of how much she should trust the supervillain, or being careful about letting herself be influenced by him, or letting other people know where she's going in case something happens. No, she's thinking about presentation. Because she knows that Eggman cares about it. And for reasons that she hasn't been forced to confront, that's very important to her. So, Petra spends as much time grooming herself today as she did for her meeting with Rita, with hopefully different intentions. She picks out her outfit, puts on light makeup, considers how to get to the cruise, and what to say, all to make a good impression on this egomaniacal supervillain. The Kana roars into a hovering position, parked in the air beside the cruise ship. A metal ladder ratchets out from its underbelly, snapping connectors onto the ship's railing, creating a dubiously safe diagonal bridge for Petra to embark from. She hops out of the cockpit, jumping down onto the ladder, and her boots improbably grip it tightly, allowing her to walk rung to rung as easily as she would across solid ground. Petra's wearing her typical bomber jacket, oversized and slouching off her shoulders, but because her overalls are currently worlds away at a drycleaners, she's wearing simple jeans, cuffed up over her combat boots. She's also got her goggles on her forehead, and a big, green, triangle scarf, that glitters with subtle iridescent shards, like flakes of mica in dirt. She waves, even though Eggman might not even be looking in her direction, a nervous smile on her face. "Hi! Dr. Eggman!" The potential symbolism of the location is, of course, lost on her.
Eggman	A lot of people look over at the Kana. It's kind of a sight you don't see very often. People would probably take photographs, but much smarter, older denizens of the Multiverse, upon hearing the name 'Dr. Eggman,' warn them against it. The crowd starts moving away from the pool and back into the ship. Eggman pushes up his sunglasses to look at Petra with his...usual black glasses. That's just such a weird thing to do. "Ahhh, Miss Soroka. Excellent, excellent!" He sits up on the beach chair and adjusts himself slightly. "Welcome to Ketchikan." "You should ask someone about it when you get a chance. Fascinating. Pure coincidence that the cruise wound up here, but a happy one, I'll grant." "A fine entrance. You've already grasped the basics. I'm delighted to see it." He adjusts his glasses (not his sunglasses, which are on his forehead just under his goggles) as he examines the Kana. "Speaking of delight...what a delightful machine. I always enjoy a good mech. Not enough of them around these days. Reliable sort of things. Ought to build one for my pod one of these days..." He trails off. Then, he moves over. "I'm also quite delighted to see you're alright. Thank you so much for your help the other day - it was most appreciated." "So come, come! Sit down. Let's have a chat."
Petra Soroka	Petra feels a little thrill at the sight of all the passengers scurrying away from her. It might've been embarrassing, she might've felt bad, if not for Eggman's immediate welcome and praise. Instead, she revels in it, that little acknowledgement of power. She walks closer, her limp abruptly more pronounced once she's on the deck, and hovers awkwardly, standing beside the pool chair. "Ask about the town? I didn't really see anything interesting about it, flying over. It just looked like a typical little Alaskan village." Petra shrugs her bomber off, and folds it over the back of the chair next to Eggman. She sits down, but doesn't recline, sitting with her back up straight. She looks over at the Kana, and lights up at Eggman's comment. "Yeah! Um. It's a good mech, definitely. It's..." Petra trails off, wondering what to say. Most of the positive words that come to mind don't feel honest to her. "Useful. And it'd be more useful to learn more about it." She rotates around in the chair, still uncomfortably sitting upright, but now with her body facing Eggman. She clearly favors one leg while moving. "And, uh. I don't know if you've seen, yet. But the console for that machine survived the battle."
Eggman	Eggman strokes his moustache. "There's some history here I wasn't personally part of. A big conflict between the factions. One of those moments that changed the balance of power. Worth looking into." He raises a finger like a sagely scholar. "History is another tool in your toolbox, my dear girl, as reliable as any wrench." "You don't know much about it, hmmmm?" Eggman's hand moves from his moustache to his chin in the Standard Thoughtful Motion From Every Cartoon Ever. "Wherever did you find it, then? Or did you steal it?" There's a little bit of excitement in his voice at 'steal it' - perhaps both because it means there may be more like it somewhere, and because it's a great start for a budding supervillain. Stealing is a good origin story. "I'm glad to hear it, but I asked about you. You are, after all, the one who protected me, and the one who sought me out now - with some presumable intent connected to our discussion and your budding rivalry. It's only right that I be worried about you, isn't it?"
Petra Soroka	Petra hums, in reluctant acknowledgement. "There's just so much history to learn. And Alaskas barely ever feature in it. I'll look it--read about it later, though." Petra corrects her phrasing mid-sentence, to seem smarter. "I--" Petra starts, defensive, then registers the approval in Eggman's voice. "I stole it. Yeah. From this big mecha-military base. I've only had it for half a year, or so, so I haven't gotten to learn everything about it. My previous mech was... a lot different." The confidence tapers away towards the end of her sentence. "It was pretty cool. The, the heist, I mean. Where I got the Kana from." A red tinge suffuses Petra's face at the mention of her 'budding rivalry', and she tugs her scarf to cover her mouth. "Yeah. Lessons about spite, you said. Wielding it to become, um." She catches herself stuttering, and repeats herself, unconsciously drawing her posture upwards at the same time. "Wielding spite to become a better nemesis. For--" It's impossible for Petra to say that part outright. She shrinks a little, as if acknowledging the failure. "Spite is why you did what you did to INDUS, right?"
Eggman	"Well of course there's so much!" Eggman says. His voice is more the scholarly professor tone (though, of course, with his usual little Manic Supervillain Inflection) than scolding - an agreement. "So you focus on the important bits of history you need to use. Perhaps, say, the origin of your rival. The people she knows. The people she cares about. The places she cares about. The places she's put work into making better." Eggman twirls his finger around his moustache as a smile crosses his face. "And then you hold those bits of information close until the times when it would cause her proper agony. You find out what she cares about and work to undermine it. You make things she made better worse just to hurt her." "That's the sort of thing you want, isn't it?" "To learn how to make things worse." He takes a sip of his eggnog. "It is. Because Ishirou denied me something that belongs to...a version of me. Another Ivo Robotnik. Much less pleasant a man, much less cultured, but Ivo Robotnik nonetheless. That Ivo was apparently defeated and his city was left...unruled. And then Ishirou moved in and fortified it." "So I took his city and denied it to him. I gave him everything he wanted except the chance to win on his own terms." He strokes his moustache again. "The power of spite is unbelievable."
Petra Soroka	Petra looks thoughtfully out into the distance, at what she thinks is west--vaguely towards Siberia. "Ohhh. That's what you mean, by using history as a tool. I can see that... being really useful. For her especially." "I don't know how much of a stomach I have for making things worse, per se. Um." Suddenly nervous about being scolded, Petra hurries to elaborate. "But for her, specifically, making things harder for her, and making things worse. Yeah." Every time Petra says 'her', referring to Lilian, she rushes through the word, not comfortable lingering on it. "What you did to that city. That's the kind of thing I like. Better, in a lot of ways, for the people there. Worse for some of them. But even if that balanced out, you made it so, so much harder on Ishirou. You made him anxious, and uneasy, and doubt himself, and you made him really, really hate you."
Eggman	Eggman's grin only tells one story. It's a grin of Triumph. He never grins unless he's Won. He's grinning right now. It's a little ominous. "Oh, my dear girl, you'll understand one day. You'll be faced with a choice between making the world better and helping your rival, and making it worse and hurting her, and on that day, you'll choose the latter. I'm quite sure of it. I'm quite excited for it, really." "Decisiveness. That's key, too. When you seen an opportunity to strike," He closes a hand into a fist to illustrate. "You seize it without hesitation!" His grin disappears back to the more kindly (sort of?) supervillain face, wagging his finger in front of him. "When you find a weakness like that, if you wait, or if you do something like spit vitriol over the public radio and try to attack egos or make them feel bad, you simply lose your opportunity. No, no. Find out what she cares about and strike. And strike in ways that make her...angry." He rubs his chin. "She wants you to stay away from her Tamamo, I believe she said earlier. So, we look her up." he stands up, walks over to a speaker near their seat, unhooks it, walks back down, rips it apart, and in about two minutes, he's made a functioning laptop out of it. It's wild to watch the man work. Wrench and screwdriver fly. With two simple tools he takes something so mundane and gives it capabilities it never should've had to begin with. Then he just types TAMAMO NO MAE into Google. "Mmm, there used to be a Tamamo-no-Mae in the Concord, but she was a different sort...still, this one claims to be Amaterasu, too...so..." He googles AMATERASU as well. Does the man not own a phone? -wait, of course not. He'd have to use someone else's cell phone service. "Da da da...ah, here we are. Attempts to lure out Amaterasu after she hid herself in a cave. Magatama beads in the upper branches of a tree, a great bronze mirror, and blue and white nikite cloth." Eggman leans back. "And she expressed concern for you the other day, didn't she? It made the Dame Commander very unhappy, I recall from my brief listenings as I handled things...upstairs." He holds up a finger. "Send Tamamo no Mae a thank-you present. Give her a necklace of beads with a nice little mirror and a blue-and-white ribbon. Don't say anything about Lilian. Just thank her for being concerned about you and apologize if you upset her." He wags his finger again. "That will annoy Lilian very, very much, I think."
Petra Soroka	Petra signals doubt at the idea that she'll eventually choose to make the world worse, fidgeting in her seat and looking away, as if she's been caught in a lie. Almost immediately, too quickly, she moves past that as Eggman continues, happy to not contemplate that idea any more than she has to--or happy to not pretend to be uncertain. She twists a strand of hair around her finger and laughs awkwardly. "I guess anything's better than arguing in the radio, yeah. I never win there." That discomfort returns at the suggestion to hurt Tamamo, and apropo of nothing, Petra opens her mouth to quietly add, "H-her girlfriend, yeah." She watches him work with rapt interest, as if this performance was another lesson, but--she can't actually keep track of it long enough to learn anything. She just settles for picking up unnecessary scraps of plastic and circuitry as Eggman discards them, piling them on the chair besides her to keep them out of the way. A good little lab assistant. That former discomfort at the idea of targeting Tamamo, already faded in the short few minutes that had passed, completely drains away when Eggman suggests his plan. Petra actually looks surprised. "O-oh. That's right. That's a really good idea." She laughs, suddenly animated. "Yeah! That's perfect, especially as a first step."
Eggman	"Oh, my. Very helpful. Well done," Eggman compliments her as she picks up the pieces, "A fine lab assistant indeed." He puts voice to the narration! He says nothing about her fidgeting - does he even notice? Maybe? Who knows. "Precisely!" He says when she says 'as a first step.' He claps his hands. "Annoying her by showing friendship to someone she is zealously possessive of. It's such a simple thing, and so hard to think of as spiteful, but really, it's what great dramas are made of." He sets the extremely bizarre makeshift computer down. "And it profits you, doesn't it? It gains you an ally - or at least someone sympathetic." The Eggman leans forward a bit. "Making allies of her friends is a beautiful way to begin isolating her, don't you think?" Then he claps her on the back and laughs. Even his laugh has that Evil Cartoon Supervillain element to it. "I trust you can take this lesson and put it to very fine use, my dear girl. Let me know if you need any assistance."
Petra Soroka	Petra emanates sunny satisfaction at the compliment, but just nods in response. She props her elbow up on the arm of her chair and leans in to rest her cheek on her hand. Slowly, throughout the conversation, she's been relaxing more comfortably on the beach chair under Eggman's umbrella. "If I get close to her friends... and every time she gets angry at me, I try not to get angry back... they'll all start turning on her, won't they? They won't be stepping in to defend her from me anymore. They'll just watch, as she makes herself hoarse yelling about something as simple as me sending Tamamo a present." A smile crawls onto her face, a bit wider than usual, tinged with just a little bit of villainy. There's already thoughts running through her head that would make Eggman proud. "I think I can use this lesson really well. Yeah. Thanks, Dr. Eggman." She gathers up her jacket and slings it over her shoulder, pushing herself out of the chair. "I'll do my best. And--and we'll meet again for another lesson, at some point?" There's hopefulness in that upwards inflection. "I can show you my mech, later, too." With that, she strides off to board the Kana, her legs seemingly more steady than they were before. She's even bouncing a little.
Eggman	"I would be delighted," Eggman says cheerfully, "Do let me know how it goes, won't you?"