Scene #8260: A Girl Without Her Robot

Owner	Pose
Petra Soroka	PHONE: Lilian Rook says, "You are an unbelievable piece of shit." PHONE: Lilian Rook for once, hangs up. Petra didn't sleep last night. After waking Remee up multiple times with her restlessness, she slipped out of the cabin, leaving the station with nothing but her revolver weighing heavily in her overalls. Cleaned, patched up, blood from that day beneath Indus washed out as if it was never there. Her limp's gone too, maybe just because no one's watching. Petra wanders for hours, gravitating back to the same environment she always seems to. A forest hiking path, leeched brown and grey with winter settled into every branch. Leaves and frost crunch underneath her boots as she walks, an hour deep into the wilderness with no one else in sight. It's difficult to label the torrent of emotions surging in Petra's chest, and she does everything possible to avoid thinking about what they might be. Her throat's been clenched tight for so long that it's become sore, and the core of her chest shivers despite the warmth of her jacket. It's fine. She's fine. Petra tosses the last remaining crumbs of the gas station jerky she bought into her mouth. Idly talking into the headset for the past few hours has distracted her, though her breath hitches in her throat whenever Lilian comes on. Pointless, one-sided chatter is deadened by the surrounding forest as she continues trudging along.
Dimokratia	February calls the clouds to a steely grey blanket, thick and cold across the sky. Beneath, a forest path, trees, wildlife. The breath of living that has no requirements, empty of the twists that humans put to their time. The forest is alive, and vibrantly so, even under the thick drapes of winter and the overhangs of light-obscuring branches. It trembles, in the way of deer and ground animals. It rustles, in the way of birds and climbing things, and sings in the upper distance with quiet chirps. The white noise of a just-north-of-white weather. And yet, on the path, if she lifts her head, the glimmer of silver, of light-catching shine. The birds that Watch her, with throats of chrome and silent beaks. One tree Petra comes to, at a curve in the forest path around a decline into a ravine with a river softly running at the base, mostly frozen over, is a thick, low branch hanging across her jerkey-eating path, with a truly Wrong bird perched there. Chrome from beak to tailtip, the silver falcon stares down, wings folded and talons hooked into the branch. A squirrel, hyperventilating and still but for the working of its little heart and breath, stresses while desperately attached to the trunk of a tree 'facing' Petra. The bird has been there at least long enough to scare a squirrel. Very much like a bird, it tilts its head and stares unblinking at Petra. From the other direction, a figure walks, too tall and broad to be a simple human. Black from the neck down with a cross between a 'zippered' collared jacket and a body-mesh, it's truly hard to tell, with the shape of hands and feet, if the figure is armored or not. Silver-white of hair and pale of face, she approaches, with the same gazing-blues of the chrome bird. Her tone contains a warm hum, as she raises her voice. "You shiver!" A statement of available fact, considering for a traveller on the same path. "Are you. . . cold?" Dimo asks, continuing to approach at a walk.
Petra Soroka	Petra's thoughts drift to Remee, despite her efforts to keep them unfocused. It's an odd habit of hers, thinking about what would happen if she died suddenly. How the news would travel. How people would react to it. The idea that some people might never hear about it, and that people would eventually just stop thinking about her. Her parents. Home. It's not an unreasonable thought right now, though. Lilian's scathing disgust sticks like burrs in her mind. Petra needled the person who she moved into the space station to escape from, turned down an offer of help, genuinely upset her in a way that still makes her heart pound and breath quicken when she thinks about it. And now Petra's left that space station, even left her mech, wandering alone in the woods. As if she's baiting something to happen. Maybe she is. She's so lost in her thoughts that the odd birds pass by without notice, crumpling up her empty bag and discarding it carelessly. The light gleaming off the falcon, though, catches her eye, and she freezes, meeting its gaze. Her reaction is remarkably similar to the squirrel's, for a moment. Paralyzed in place, muscles tensed and still, breath quickening, hand habitually, automatically, wrapped around the grip of her revolver in her jacket. Then Dimo calls out to her, and the spell is broken. Petra whips around, gun drawn, sharp crackling filling the air as she grinds her feet into the frozen detritus. "Who are you? What do you want?" The revolver trembles, her heart pounding too hard to keep her hands steady.
Dimokratia	She left so many things, for a walk in the woods. To be anywhere but where she was. Dimo, likewise, is on a walk for a purpose. She approaches, and Petra can feel a sourceless hum, in the inner ear, tingling in the molar teeth, a nerve-vibration, something washing over her from the exposed sinuses. Warmth on the cheeks. The scent of sun-warm cloth lifting into the sinuses. And at the crackling center of her forebrain -- Like the pouring of a liquid across her forehead, tangible synapse-force rolls across Petra's brow. The presence of the figure, continuing her advance. Dark lips curl into a little smile, though there's an -- annoyance? uncertainty? -- as the directed synapse pour is redoubled while Petra rattles like the squirrel hiding from the falcon in the tree. It's Dimo's voice that brings the Petra shocked to stillness back to aggressive vibrance, and only when a pistol is wheeled on her does she stop. She doesn't lift her hands. She just stops. "Ah..." Begins the tall woman, whose face is framed in the fall of silver-white, and defined by lines and panels, calculated curves, and the impression of clothes atop. The smile returns, and her chin tilts back a bit, so her eyes track down the gun a few degrees more down-casted incredulity. Her voice rolls out of her with a warm reactor hum. "In your language, the phrase is. . . 'be not afraid'?" She begins, before lifting her right hand to her collar, to indicate herself. "I am Dimo, of the Silver. And you. . . Are the girl who wished to rid herself of the state-before-kissing. Yes?"
Petra Soroka	The synaptic pressure breaks against Petra's mind like a rock dropped into a flowing creek, shattering it into chaotic eddies and diverted currents. Warmth washes over her surface consciousness, telling her this is how you should be. It's a familiar feeling, enough to jumpstart neural pathways and spike panic into her throat. The cold, tangled shield of her mind quickly reasserts itself, pulsing out with such vehement rejection that it's nearly a tangible force. Petra's eyes harden with anger, glaring at Dimo. "Wait. I know your voice. You were that robotic one that showed up in the radio a few days ago." Her face twists in disgust and confusion. "What the fuck? What? You're with her right? You have to be. And that's what you--?" Petra's baffled indignance doesn't seem to extend far enough for her to protest that she isn't a kissless virgin, actually, to this tall robot woman. She cuts off her own sentence with a subvocal growl of frustration, taking a step back. "She sent you? For that? A joke?"
Dimokratia	There are several things in a row that go about like a dropped rock. The resistance, the active push-back cools the palpably warm presence of the tall woman. Gazing-down blues adjust, glowing optics narrowing and focusing as her head slowly takes the same tilt as the falcon in the branch above. It is not the woman that reacts, but the bird, ruffling and sweeping out its wings, chrome pinions and feathertips each individually perfect and articulated down to the tiniest detail, each feather-barb along the vane texturally included. One taloned leg unhitches from the tree and lifts, only to drop back two centimeters wider, talons closing around the branch in audible clicks. Ti-kuh. Ti-kuh. Ti- Dimo's lips turn to a mild pout, as her head rights, and the falcon's mirrors, returning to a proud lift and a gazing-down smile. "I am with many, and yet, I represent. . . the Silver. As stated." She reminds, gently, with her collar-holding hand lowering to a palm-up offer out. Each finger, wrapped in carbon black glove-cladding, stretches and curls outwards - fully opening, at least to the human extent. "I . . . have to be?" She considers, humming at that thoughtfully. Her eyes shift - not saccade, but pan uncannily - towards the falcon, and the falcon shifts its stare to her. A shared look. Performative and deliberate. "No. I do not think so. I will tell you who called me, here, to you." "A girl on the radio." "I believe her name was. . . Petra? She wished to end a certain state, and said so plainly. Is there a... problem?" She has to ask. Her synapse-field crackles like warm static against Petra's mental barriers when her eyes pan back onto her, indignant and angry as Petra is, a fizz like hot cola, or the bubbles of a jaccuzi she was at the center of. "Ah. I understand completely. I can summon one of a different presentation, if you prefer. The... culture, it is not mine." She smiles, all lips, and no teeth. All gazing-down eyes, and warm effervescence in the periphery of others' resisting minds.
Petra Soroka	Petra's eyes dart between Dimo and the falcon, though her revolver stays trained on the former. Everything about this woman kicks her danger senses into overdrive, but at the same time, she feels cornered. Dozens of eyes of silver-throated birds prickling on the back of her neck. A hand reaches up to her headset, trembling, then stops, and slowly returns to wrap around the gun. Dimo's outstretched hand is ignored, aside from a shaky second step backwards. "I-I didn't call you here. I don't even have a fucking problem. I had a boyfriend, okay? I said that. I don't know what the hell the Silver is, but I know that, that Lilian talked to someone about getting rid of me. And you know what? If she really wants to know that fucking bad, his name was Noah! It literally doesn't matter at all!" Petra's chest rises and falls with quick, shallow breaths. Her psychic knot pulses in time with her heart, its borders writhing, irregular, catching that buzzing sensation in crevices and crushing it. She doesn't actually address the topic of kissing, specifically. "I don't need someone else. And I certainly don't need anything from you. If that was what you had to say, we're done here."
Dimokratia	It's not difficult to follow the light presentory games of node and relay, the falcon - and all the silver-throated birds, scatterd all about the forest trees - simply an extension, a reflection, a repeater of her feelings and expression. The birds, thankfully, do not peer with the same synaptic crackle that their 'master' does. Dimo's hand closes around a name, and little else but defiance. Yet, she holds something. "Noah. A good name. The one who withstands floods, yes?" The tall gazing-down woman's smile remains, but her hand slides back into a loose cross with its partner, wrapped in a still-pond reflective black coating. "The Silver. . . is a place that you can move towards, the land of my mother and father, a living moon that grew the seed of a crystal tree until the branches reached across the multiverse and brought me here, to hear a conversation, and the negative space-" Dimo takes the step forward that Petra retreated into, one foot deliberately lifting, motioning, and stepping in to the space the reatreating girl left, for her to lean down just a bit, closer, nearer, the fizzing now tassel-lines that tickled in like fingers around the edge of vision, a swimming where a tide rolled against break-water rubble and the erected wall. "-was where my answers remained." She continues, easing off from her lean to complete the half-step and readjust back to gazing-down. "And if that is not all I had to say, we are not? I understand your language, your culture, greater as we speak." Her smile brightens, happy humming. "Isn't being present, in the moment, much better?" The warmth remains, now just a bit eager. "And so... if I stand here, perhaps, or sit down, and you were to kiss me, then you would be taking. Mmm? Receiving, but not being given to. That is better for you, yes?" And without checking if that's really the case, Dimo pivots, to step off the path onto a fallen trunk and a tumble of brush and crucnchy winter detritus, settling down to turn back and place both hands besides her on the fallen wood. "Hmm? Is it easier if I close my eyes, as well?" She asks, because she is surrounded by eyes, and so one set is nothing to her.
Petra Soroka	Petra's arms ache. Her elbows lock in place, too rigid to keep trembling, the gun still thrust out in front of her like a shield. Helpless though it may seem, with Dimo's collective surrounding her, the gun has to stay between them. A symbol of defiance, pushing against that synaptic pressure as much as much as her mental defenses are. Confusion washes across her face, dulling her scowl, and she starts to answer the woman without thinking. "Floods...? I don't.... Oh, you mean--" She shakes her head, cutting herself off. "I didn't really ask about your home. I just said I didn't know what it was. That wasn't an invitation to explain." Petra recoils, shrinking under Dimo's approach, her bomber jacket swallowing her as she twists away. Her eyes catch on Dimo's gaze; her lips part, the silent exhale slipping between them is chest-warm, breath scattering in a telltale cloud. One cut off abruptly when her breath hitches, fog wisping away in a moment. Petra catches herself allowing the gun to droop, and pulls it back up, gritting her teeth audibly loud. Dimo's growing excitement only seems to harden Petra's expression further, her voice raspy with anger when she responds. "What makes you think that'd be better? What kind of twisted freak would you have to be, to prefer taking? That's sick." The muzzle tracks Dimo as she sits, steadier than Petra's eyes, which deflect away each time they settle on Dimo's body. A trembling finger moves to squeeze the trigger, but locks up, unable to. "Let me be more clear. I am not getting anything out of this interaction. And I'm caring less and less whether you're getting anything out of it, either."
Dimokratia	Settled, serene and warm, Dimo sits in winter's white glow, radiating a perfect sphere around her of heat and warm light. A radius out to a meter glistens and shifts, dripping in her presence, incapable of being truly cold with her present. Petra, facing her, puffs out a breath, hitches, and the mist finds that sphere of control and even her breath is changed by the proximity to the strange, tall figure who settles herself back invitingly just off the path. An offer of another sort -- Dismissed. Dimo's eyes pan down - slow, drooping, tired - to Petra's arm-locked pistol, which she hadn't paid any mind to before. "What makes me think that would be better. What kind of twisted freak would I have to be? To prefer that." Repeating, inquiring, considering. Petra keeps talking and Dimo receives it all as gifts, having been given to all cool evening. "Taking, receiving, they're. . . syn-o-nyms, aren't they? Different words for the same meaning, but different in language, in culture. You could also ask," A light roll of warm laughter, amused at her own philosophy. "If I prefer being given a sweet delight, or collecting my choice of delicacy. Do I prefer to be given to? Or do I prefer to select, to choose myself? The thrill is different." She explains, voice moving smooth and serene. Like a mother to a child, or the soft voice of a teacher. "You didn't ask, but I will tell you." Dimo agrees. "Unlike," She corrects, the faintest hint of a smirk curling her lips, but unreflected on her panel-cheeks. "All the other questions you asked, and received answers to." Dimo, from her inviting-wide stance, narrows her sitting, lifting right leg slowly over her left thigh and curling ankle in to rest in a cross. Left arm loosely holds across her front, and right arm lifts fingers to curl in a fist, and settle under her chin. Thoughtful, arranged, she leans forward with her lips parted just-so in a smile, and gazing blue optical rings aglow with inner light in the forest dim. "I prefer to receive," She husks, voice among her hum, low enough that the ears try to strain and hear it. It's effortless to hear anyway. All about, the loud forest is eerily silent, just in time for Dimo's words, to Petra's ears. "But giving is a passion too. And you've received so much, tonight. Haven't you? Think about it. Give it..." A little throaty chuckle follows. "Ten seconds, if you can." During the contemplative time, Dimo rolls open her fingers, to touch the black-pool fingers to her lips, emit an exaggerated 'mek' of contact, and blow out her 'kiss' towards the gun-holding girl, alike a puff of breath and mist and motion, but hers a mist of shimmering reflections, diamond dust in warm silver. Then she stands, and, without further comment, turns to step long over the trunk she had used as a stool and take a few steps deeper into the silent forest, with the deafening crunch of her feet on still-frozen ground past her meter of core warmth. A single blue eye over her shoulder, and the corner of her grin lifts over the rise of her broad, dark back. Then she moves her eyes forward, and continues walking. If she looks for the falcon, pivoting on it after, the silver bird is gone. And all of the silver-throated birds. And all of the squirrels -- save one, which collapses from exhaustion besides the trunk of a tree a minute after the silent forest swallows up the tall woman in black.